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THEORY AND PRACTICE 



OF 



TEACHING. 



Eotttion: C. J. CLAY AND SON, 

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS WAREHOUSE, 

Ave Maria Lane. 




fflamirftge; DEIGHTON, BELL, AND CO. 
Steipjis; F. A. BROCKHAUS. 



THEORY AND PRACTICE 



OF 



TEACHING 

- 1) 



BY THE 



REV. EDWARD THRING, M.A. 

HEAD MASTER OF UPPINGHAM SCHOOL, LATE FELLOW OF 
king's COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE. 

^ "* NEW AND REVISED EQITION. : 



>'jt-~^' '^'U i- 



CAMBRIDGE:: ,. 
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS. 

1885 

{AZ/ Rights rese7'ved,\ 



IBlOZS 

T53 



PRINTED BY C. J. CLAY, M.A. & SOW 
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS. 



TO 

MY WIFE, 

AND PARTNER IN SCHOOL-LIFE; 

TO WHOSE 

COURAGE AND HELP 

I OWE SO MUCH 

OF 

LIFE, AND OF WORK DONE, 

THIS SECOND EDITION 

IS, 

AS IT OUGHT TO BE, 

DEDICATED. 



PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. 



It is ill protesting too much. Many good reso- 
lutions of silence made and confirmed during thirty 
years of school-work, as every hope of a public character 
which brightened the early days was destroyed, have 
been broken by the appearance of this book. Success 
only strengthened the conviction that it was useless to 
speak; and yet when the conviction seemed strongest 
some folly has swept it away. Or is it instinct, like the 
prescient idiotcy of the butterfly, that lays its eggs on 
cabbage leaf, or nettle, forced by a blind impulse to 
thwart its ov/n experience, and deposit part of its life 
where no sign warrants an idea that it will be allowed 
to live? Perhaps a strong behef that anything, which 
has a touch of true life in it, will live somewhere or 



viil Preface to the Fh^st Edition. 

other is at the bottom of it all, however overlaid by 
chiller wisdom. So this bit of life goes forth. And if 
it does any work or worker good, cheers, or helps a 
single toiling fellow-creature, the writer will have had 
his reward. It may be that another hand and heart may 
take this up, enrich it with wealth of his own, fill it full 
of prevailing power, and send it on, a higher creation, in 
a fortunate hour, to a happier end. 



The School House, 
Uppingham, 
May, 1S83. 



PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 



He, who from whatever motive appears for a lost 
cause, may be well pleased at obtaining a hearing ; and 
need not wonder if the toleration granted him be some- 
what due to an unconsciousness of the meaning of his 
statements. If a nation has in practice decided against 
teaching, it is likely that they will take the word in their 
own sense and refuse to admit a different interpretation 
of it. Hence the uselessness of speaking on the sub- 
ject. But the hope that a worker's words might cheer 
and help fellow-workers has been fully verified. So the 
author, joining hands with English-speaking brethren 
in far distant lands, sends out this second edition 



X Preface to the Second Edition. 

cheered and strengthened himself by having cheered 
and strengthened others ; certain now that there are 
seeds of hfe in it, which touch the lives of others^ even 
as they came out of his own hfe first. 



The School House, 
Uppingham, 
May, 1885. 



:r- 



PART I. 
THE THEORY OF TEACHING. 



CHAPTER I. 

PAGE 



011a Podrida 



CHAPTER n. 
The Philosopher's Stone i8 

CHAPTER ni. 
Legs not Wings 41 

CHAPTER IV. 
Stupidity banished • , 56 



xii Contents. 



CHAPTER V. 

PAGE 
Market Price, and Real Value. The Auctioneer's Hammer, 

and the Swine-herd's Horn ...... 65 



CHAPTER VI. 
Real Value. Growing eyes . . . , , , • 83 

CHAPTER VII. 
Observation. Mental Law. Accuracy 94 

CHAPTER VIII. 
The Schoolboy's Briar-patch, Latin and Greek . . . 103 

CHAPTER IX. 
The Furniture Shop, and the Skilled Workman . . .121 

CHAPTER X. 
The Teacher. ...'...... 131 



Contents. xiii. 

PART II. 

THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING. 



CHAPTER I. 

PAGE 

The Workman, and the Reader . . , , , . 143 



CHAPTER H. 
The Raw Material, Structure, Teaching .... 149 

CHAPTER HI. 
The Lecturer 157 

CHAPTER IV. 

Thought-stamps J not Argument . . . . . , • 164 

CHAPTER V. 
Inattention, Indifference, Sleep . . . . • • I73 

CHAPTER VL 
Memory. Feed it • 183 



xiv Contents, 



CHAPTER VII. 

PAGE 

The Blurred Chromograph. Sham Mistakes. Snores. Lu- 
natic Mistakes. No Answers . . . . . .192 



CHAPTER VIII. 
Run the Goose down . , 202 

CHAPTER IX. 
Playing with the bat upside down 210 

CHAPTER X. 

Quis custodiat ipsos custodes ? . . . . . .225 

CHAPTER XI. 
Thought governs Words 226 

CHAPTER XII. 
A schoolboy's chapter « 237 

CHAPTER XIII. 
Punishment . « 245 

CHAPTER XIV. 
The dead hand, and the Shadow of death . , . « 252 



PART I, 



CHAPTER I. 

THE THEORY OF TEACHING. 

Olla Podrida, 

Some people have thought that vast changes demand 
something more definite to justify them than a vast diffi- 
culty; and sympathise with the hares in the fable, who 
wished to know a little more about the noise behind 
them before they leapt into the pit in front. Theorists 
have even ventured to imagine that a clear perception 
of elementary principles tested by practical experience 
should precede action on a large scale. There have 
existed men bold enough to hint in private that work 
involving the most varied and skilful application of mind 
and machinery is no fit subject for amateur authority. 
It has even been asserted that m very compHcated work- 
ing conditions, if the skilled workman does not know 
how to do the work, at least no one else does. England 
has found her difficulty, and appears to be in a state of 
uneasy self-satisfaction about education. 

T. I 



2 Indicrestio7i and crudities. 

o 

School-buildings are being put up everywhere. And 
if school-buildings are schools, be happy, the thing is 
done. There is much Inspecting going on everywhere. 
And if Inspectors are schools, be happy, the thing is 
done. Droves of children are driven in every^vhere. 
And if droves of children are schools, be happy, the 
thing is done. There is much boasting of the money 
spent in schools, as if the more spent the better the deed, 
with somewhat the complacence of the miUionaire, who 
glorifies his new potatoes because they cost a guinea 
apiece; but those who eat them are not quite clear 
whether the guinea-apiece glow, or the indigestion, is 
the right feeling. For indigestion there is; a great deal 
of it. The restless movements betray stomachs ill at 
ease. There is no peace. Everybody talks. Cabinet 
Ministers lay down the law. Philosophers lay down the 
law. The very school-boys lay down the law. And the 
public take sides with much vehemence. That is easy : 
for there are many sides to take. The congratulations 
of one Cabinet Minister are met by the sarcasms of 
another; philosopher finds philosopher bar the way; 
and partizans have every opportunity, that diversity of 
opinion and total absence of experience can give, of 
following their own predilections. There is however a 
general agreement in crying out for different novelties to 
be taught, without casting a thought on the question 
whether any real teaching is as yet possible; or even 
whether any power of teaching anything properly is in 
existence. There is a great cry for new subjects; but no 
voice raised for new teaching. Possibly because most 
people are acquainted with books; whilst the idea of 



Schools are silent, gurgoyles spout, 3 

dealing with minds may be unknown. At all events, 
known or unknown, no one names the unwelcome 
stranger. But there is much rushing to and fro, much 
confident action, much dead pressure, authority busy at 
work, and that general infallibiUty of dictation, which 
betokens a great outbreak with all its wants and all the 
inexperience of experimenting. It may seem curious 
that whilst this irruption has burst into the realm of 
school, overrun school-husbandry, and swarmed like 
locusts over the land, one voice has not been heard, and 
in one quarter a great silence has reigned. Schools have 
been invaded; schools have been operated on; and 
schools have been dumb. But it is not unnatural. The 
voice of the skilled workman, who has spent his life in 
trying to teach, finds nothing to invite speech. Their 
lips have been sealed. Wliy speak when so many are 
speaking? What chance of being heard, when everybody 
knows what no one has tried so much better than those 
who have, and who bring nothing but the harvest of 
their lives into the fray ? 

So no one, who has observed the laws of human 
action, will wonder at this absence of the skilled work- 
man, for when the waters are muddied the fish are not 
seen. But mud is not reform, though often mistaken 
for it. A sudden awakening to new needs in an old 
domain always creates this turmoil. Numbers have been 
pinched by the old, or felt the want of something new. 
The general carpenters of the universe are up and doing 
at once, eager for a job; all the clever ignorance of 
amateurs is in flood; aspirants for a name, and — a cause, 
see an opening; all the gurgoyles of the public buildings 

I — 2 



4 The one-eyed man. 

spout; in this way a movement is hurried on from out- 
side with abrupt and prevailing power by tliose who feel 
all the inconveniences, and more, but know none of the 
difficulty. Like a large party suddenly discharged on 
an out-of-the-way Inn, everybody shouts, and wants, and 
expects everything, without the slightest idea where it is 
to come from. Those, whose business it is, have enough 
to do in doing what they can • do for a time, without 
entering into discussions. So the schools have been 
silent, and busy; and perhaps not altogether unmindful 
of the true version of the old Proverb, '•'-that in the king- 
dom of the blind the o?ie-eyed mail is himg." Nevertheless 
this present book, somewhat tempered by fear of the 
gallows, makes its appearance; and is a contribution, be 
it wise or foolish, from the side of the practical Teacher. 
Certainly it is an intrusion into the great company who 
have hitherto been eloquent on the question; and is not 
unconscious of a certain diffidence in the presence of so 
many distinguished personages. The Drawing-room as- 
sembly with its brilliant array of talkers is an imposing 
sight; and the fustian jacket of the working man looks 
somewhat out of place, and brings a sense of awkward- 
ness to its wearer. Yet if work is the subject, and there 
is anything in knowing how to work, a working man's 
facts may be better than an orator's words. They may 
serve to draw attention to things which have been over- 
looked; may put working necessities in a different light; 
and though they smell somewhat of oil and machinery 
may recall to more glib debaters that there is oil and 
machinery to be dealt with. The man who comes fresh 
from the work, and with some knowledge of what can, 



A new despotism. 5 

or cannot, be done with the machinery and material em- 
ployed, and carries his worlc-shop in his brain, feels in- 
stinctively the gulf there is between himself and his well- 
dressed companions. He is utterly bewildered by the 
omniscient Babel around him. All his practical instincts 
are at fault. As he listens his solid experience seems to 
become a dissolving viev/, and melt imperceptibly away. 
He cannot build either theory or practice on the aerial 
foundation offered to him so confidently. To be silent 
appears cowardly. But how speak when the stored up 
gains of his life are put on a level with brain-spun gossa- 
mers, and carry less authority? It may be cowardly to 
be silent j but it casts a slur on Hfe to condescend to 
speak on such terms. 

The most important elementary truths have not been 
brought forward at all. No one has. asked the simple 
question, what it costs to teach anything properly to each 
boy in a class. No one has examined whether it is 
possible under existing conditions to teach each boy. 
And of course the further questions, What is the percent- 
age of untaught? what becomes of the untaught? and 
what becomes of the teachers, who have not time to 
teach, and never learn how to teach in consequence? 
have not come to the surface. The air is full of ques- 
tions of principle, not one of which has been settled, 
though many are trying them unsettled, trying them in 
the most costly way. Vast systems have been set on 
foot. The land is full of new authorities; the land is 
full of new buildings, so different in kind that they can- 
not all be right. Large sums are being lavished, and for 
the first time in English History a despotic power is lay- 



6 Our bigoted forefathers and Liberty. 

ing down railroads for the minds of men, and insisting 
that all shall travel by their lines, and be taxed in the 
name of liberty and enlightenment to pay for them. 
Our poor old bigoted forefathers, who foolishly loved, 
and foolishly gave free gifts with a liberal hand to pro- 
mote what they loved; and who calculated that in the 
long run freedom and love would produce the most lov- 
ing and effective work, have indeed been convicted of 
folly. Liberty knows no such squeamishness; and they 
have been taught what liberty means. Their free gifts 
have been taken away; the one thing they loved most 
laid under a ban, and a policeman domiciled in their 
homes to teach them liberal ideas. This is a little 
puzzling to those who are not to the manner born. To 
some few it almost seems like a new bride in their dead 
mother's place; if indeed she is dead. But, dead or not 
dead, this new Liberty reigns, and every one who is not 
a fool does homage to the eldest child of advanced 
thought, which indeed has advanced so far that perhaps 
it has got quite round the circle again. The old Liberty 
is dead, the new Liberty reigns. And great are the 
acclamations, and varied the cries. Fustian-jacket does 
not know quite what to make of it all. There are so 
many surprises. A few of the rival cries shall be given 
to show that this perplexity is not an imaginary picture. 
To begin with, we are told boldly, as indeed we ought to 
be told, that the people must be educated; and that no 
money can be better spent than the money which ensures 
that the people are educated. Everybody heartily, ex 
animo, body and soul, agrees with the great axiom. But 
here the unanimity ceases. What is education.^ Is it 



Popes dichtm, 7 

the article now in the market? Who are the people to 
be educated? and how? These and many similar ques- 
tions disturb the smooth perfection of the axiom quoted. 
"Knowledge is power" say some; get knowledge, give 
knowledge, and millennium begins. Others quote Pope 
with approval, or would do so if they had ever read him. 

"A little learning is a dangerous thing, 
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring." 

Which however may be common-sensed into plainer 
English thus, 

"A little money is a dangerous snare, 
Get thousands, but of sixpences beware." 

Then a doubt arises whether the thousands are always 
better than the sixpences. It may be that a blind Sam- 
son pulling down the fabric of his home and his country 
on the head of all he loves best, amidst the congratula- 
tions of himself and his party, is less to be envied than 
the poor cripple, who, however misled, is too weak to do 
the same. All are agreed again that it is a debt owed to 
children to give them proper teaching. But who owes 
the debt? And, What is proper teaching? Do the 
parents owe the debt? and if so, at what period is it 
right and wise to make someone else pay it? In ancient 
times the enlightened Greek, or Roman, who was blessed 
with children, whom he could not feed, or did not want 
to feed, settled the question in a simple way, by exposing 
them. It was wrong, but logical, and effectual. Logical, 
inasmuch as no man has any right to call a life into the 
world which he cannot maintain. He is bound either to 
destroy it, or accept the cost of it. The sacred gift of 



8 The endozument of beer. 

life demands full acknowledgment. The ancients met 
the dilemma boldly by putting an end to the life. We 
demur to this. But was it the duty of the State to pre- 
vent this great crime by passing a law Ihat everybody 
should be taxed to provide for his neighbour's child, and 
remove the responsibility of life from the authors of life, 
by relieving the traitors against life from the penalties of 
treason? Or in plain vernacular, at what point is it right 
to make the moral, thrifty, patient worker pay for his 
idle neighbour's illegitimate child, or illegitimate beer, or 
any other illegitimacies he may have a mind to? For 
that question lies at the root of all State support of those 
who don't pay by taxes levied on those who do. The 
mode of payment makes no difference. It comes to the 
same in the end whether a shilling is given under com- 
pulsion direct to the sturdy beggar who proceeds to 
spend it in beer, or the State takes it, as a compulsory 
tax, and hands it over to the alms-claimant, through some 
high-sounding title indirectly. The illegitimate child is 
supported by the thrifty man's earnings in both cases. 
No doubt the practice of exposing infants was cruel, nay 
criminal; but when ought the law to step in and punish 
the good man for his neighbour's cruelty, and fine him 
for his own self-denial by making him pay for another's 
self-indulgence ? 

The exposure of infants was got rid of in time but 
certainly not by laws compelling the community to rear 
them, as w^e are doing. No great natural law can be 
broken with impunity by man-made law, and some think, 
with St Paul, the duty of self-maintenance a great natural 
law, and that those who bring life into the world must 



Education and natural laws. 9 

bear the responsibility of their act. They want to know 
what is the difference in principle between the parents 
who expose the children they have brought into the world 
to the misery of ignorance and crime, and the parents, 
who in old heathen days brought children into the world 
with the same criminal neglect, and settled the matter by 
getting rid of them by exposing them to death. Are we 
to have State dinners, as well as State schools ? State 
feeding shops for the body, as well as State feeding shops 
for the mind? A line must be drawn somewhere. Every- 
body cannot pay everybody else's debts. A line, they 
say, must be drawn somewhere, at what course in the 
State feeding is it to be drawn? at grammar? or at 
pudding? When does the law of robbing your thrifty 
neighbour, if he is in a minority, come in ? And more 
important still, at what point does it stop ? Is a man 
rich or poor who can afford to spend half his income on 
beer and maintain his wife and family with the other half, 
as contrasted with the man who spends 2 per cent, in 
drink, and has every penny besides preoccupied in 
struggling to keep an honourable position? Which of 
the two ought to pay for the other's child ? The experi- 
ment is not new. It has been tried on a grand scale. 
For a thousand years the civilised world strove to solve 
this problem. The Church in the name of religion and 
charity, whilst labouring with one hand, bribed idleness 
with the other, until the number of non-workers became 
intolerable, and the whole fabric broke up, and flooded 
Europe with unprovided poor. Yet at the beginning how 
beautiful the ideal seemed, how high was its claim. All 
the learning, and almost all the industry of their time 



lo Thuggee sugar. 

took shelter In the monasteries, or roamed the world with 
the mendicant orders. But the canker of unearned gain 
proved too strong ; a little spot at first, it spread till it 
tainted the whole ; so all fell to pieces ; and the problem 
of life, and how to deal with unthrift, began again. 
Various have been the remedies tried, the gallows, the 
guillotine, bribery, poor laws ; and all have failed. Now 
once more, say they, the State steps in with the old 
nostrum new gilt, and proposes to endow idleness, un- 
thrift, and self-indulgence in a disguised way ; and estab- 
lish new State mendicant orders in a mendicant school 
garb, of a neo-mediseval type. As if the taste of other 
people's money ever left the lips that once have touched 
it; or ever failed, like the sacred sugar of the Thug, once 
tasted, to do in time its deadly work of robbery and 
wrong. Is the nation at a vast expense distributing 
Thuggee sugar ? Many ask this question. Others again 
wish to know whether a little knowledge, even if honestly 
got, is the thing wanted; or if wanted, may not be bought 
too dear. The sixpennyworth of knowledge, derided by 
Pope, but not despised by common sense, may be too 
heavily weighted by its conditions. If bought by the 
sacrifice of independence it is too dear. A manly in- 
dependence which faces its own responsibiHties in a 
brave and honest way, is better than a little more learning 
with a pauperised heart, even if the learning is got. 
Character is worth more than sixpence, especially six- 
pennyworth of alms, a bit of another man's life in coin. 
No one can get from another what it is his duty to do 
himself. A man can no more do his neighbour's duty 
for him than he can eat his neighbour's dinner for him ; 



What has legislation to say? ii 

a truth too often forgotten. And he who is master of 
himself and his passions does not want a beggar's pittance 
from his neighbour to enable him to indulge his appetites 
at his neighbour's expense. To put it in a different 
form j how ma,ny sixpennyworths of knowledge go to 
make a noble character ? Exactly as many as the number 
of cannon that go to make an honest man. Power is not 
wisdom, nor knowledge honour. The distinction between 
help which is kind, and the pauperising, which is a cruel 
parody of kindness, requires to be marked ; it is not yet 
done. The distinction between knowledge and training 
requires to be marked. It is not yet done. What is 
Education ? We ought to know after so many years of 
legislation. Legislation is supposed to know what it is 
legislating about. The whole system of schools in this 
country has been reconstructed at a vast expense, much 
of it permanent and unchangeable. What answer have 
these architects of mind given to the great question 
which their reconstructive work supposes them to have 
mastered ? Is Education the making the mind full ? or 
is it making the mind strong? Is teaching the putting 
in facts, or drawing out and practising latent powers ? 
Or is there something else not yet above the horizon ? 

Examinations and Inspection suggest a dark conti- 
nent to the explorer's foot. But one thing is certain. 
Examinations and Inspection proceed on the hypothesis 
that the work is known, and the process of working per- 
fect. The Examiner, from the height of superior know- 
ledge, only has to see whether the school follows out 
successfully a known and perfect method. A Govern- 
ment Examination and Inspection, with its overwhelming 



12 Examinations and perfection. 

power both of the purse and of authority, runs all the work 
of all the schools before long into one mould; since any- 
thing original is outside the Inspector's range, any new 
method absent from his plan, any discovery wasted time in 
his court. Government Examination and Inspection, if 
they certify merit, imply a position of perfection reached, 
and the clear superiority of the perfect judge over all he 
passes judgment on. But this implies death to all origin- 
ality, and all progress of an original kind. Some say 
that the present processes are not perfect, and that there 
is no such superiority. Some think that liberty to im- 
prove is a valuable item in Education. Then again, 
what is Examination ? on what principle is it to be con- 
ducted ? Does any one know ? We have not however 
yet reached the sagacious experience of Rome, so that 
two Examiners cannot meet without laughter. Our augury 
is still a science, and believed in. Is special teaching or 
general culture best ? Bread-winning work, or mental 
gymnastics and brain-exercise ? What necessities govern 
mankind in this field of labour ? What natural laws are 
there v/hich cannot be evaded or broken, however much 
men try ? Natural laws, of. the time that the individual 
can spare for self-preparation before he is forced to work 
for food ; natural laws, of the strength of body and 
strength of mind that the individual brings to his task ; 
natural laws, of the risk the individual runs of not suc- 
ceeding in the higher kind of work, even if he can give 
time, and is fairly strong. All these, whether men like 
it or not, affect education, decide infallibly the main 
possibilities ; and in the long run fix with an iron rigidity 
what different classes can do, and cannot do; and, unless 



Education and trade laws, 13 

a nation sinks to the level of the savage, by fixing this, 
fix the position of the classes as classes for ever. What 
is the unit of calculation by which in any given instance 
the cost of teaching can be calculated, on the basis that 
each boy is honestly taught, and neither the boy de- 
frauded of his teaching because he is slovf, nor the 
teacher of his pay ? As far as teaching is a trade, the 
honest cost of the honest trade article ought to be known, 
and given. What then is the true price of a Teacher in 
the market? and why? If the true price is not given, 
somebody must suffer. And the further question arises, 
whether, if the teacher suffers, a system which requires 
martyrs to work it truly does not in the second genera- 
tion get worked by cheats ? If the taught, it is for the 
parents to consider whether the possible success of a few 
is compensation for the certain failure of the many. A 
thousand such gossamers are floating in the air, restless 
and intangible j up to the present time floating at ran- 
dom, merely cobwebbing the popular brain. Again, the 
power of the State to check all original progress, and 
kill by praise, is great. Can the State through any agency 
whatever award praise and blame year by year, and judge 
degrees of merit in schools without dishonesty? or can 
it only judge whether they are cut to the State pattern ? 
How ought the Schoolmasters to be treated? Should 
they be made subject to their inferiors, and their skilled 
work placed under non-workmen ? Through their agency 
thought and knowledge pass into every educated mind 
in the nation. They are the leaders of mind to the great 
majority. If the leaders are degraded will it benefit the 
led ? And they are degraded if freedom is not given ; if 



14 A nation defonned. 

there is no belief in skill ; no trust that skill in the long 
run knows how to work best. It is easy to sneer at the 
word "leader," but it is a bad thing for those who sneer 
if the sneer is deserved; for the worse the trainers are, 
the more powerful is their effect. If the whole nation was 
passed through a system of Chinese foot bandages in child- 
hood, what would become of our workmen and soldiers ? 
But Schools do pass the whole nation through a course 
of bandaging ; and if the bandaging is wrong the club- 
footed mind, with one perverted idea, like an excrescence, 
praised because it is unusual and artificial, becomes very 
possible. Supposing the due proportion between two 
great principles is lost, intellect versus character for ex- 
ample, and the intellect is fed at the expense of the body 
and feelings, the nation becomes all head and no body, 
like a dwarf; and its leaders do incalculable mischief by 
having their humanity thus stunted and distorted, with 
much power, and little sympathy to make the power 
kindly. Or perchance the failures lose all sympathy, 
and gain little power, and become hollow-headed animals. 
The prize-winners big-headed dwarfs, the neglected boys 
hollow-headed animals, with no intellectual skill, and yet 
bred up to put faith in intellect, and to fall a prey in 
consequence to every talker of words, till a plague of 
words possesses the land. Once more, how ought the 
State to deal with the leaders of thought and knowledge? 
Should they be considered as skilled workmen engaged 
in work requiring consummate skill, who understand their 
work and are ready to do it? or, as carrying out the 
instructions of a higher authority, that understands the 
work, which they merely execute as instruments ? If so. 



The State and the Teachers. 15 

who are these authorities that understand complicated 
work which they have never done ? Are they Statesmen, 
or are they Philosophers? In neither case have they 
ever taught a child. Is it in teaching only that to have 
had no experience qualifies for being an authority? Or 
is the skilled workman interested in his work, or the 
unskilled workman not interested in his work, most likely 
to make the work prosper ? If the Schoolmaster is not 
a skilled workman, who is ? Who knows the work better, 
or is being trained to know the work better? Charles V. 
discovered at last that if a man could not make clocks 
keep time to a second, he was not likely to succeed with 
the far more varied machinery of mind. Query, Is this 
true or not? seeing that the school clocks will soon 
have to strike by St Stephen's. Such questions require 
answering. They have not been answered. Nay, they 
have not, some of them, been asked. None have been 
considered judicially, on their own merits, apart from the 
pressure of the hour. These are a few of the loose 
thoughts that are running about, riderless. Many more 
might be found. But enough has been said to show 
that a great and undefined movement is going on 
in a haphazard and undefined way. Every earnest 
mind must rejoice that there is movement. There 
is life in movement. As long as there is liberty to 
move there is hope. If a strong new life is pushing out 
it needs space ; space it must have, and space is cleared 
oftentimes by overthrow and pain. The war of opinions, 
and the crash of decayed glories, may be, and must be, 
full of trouble, often accompanied by great pain. There 
is nothing really to dread in this, if it is caused by the 
push of growing life. But true life grows from within 



1 6 Good nets make poor gods. 

outwards. When the stir takes place because force from 
without is breaking in, then there is danger. Then there 
is reason to fear lest no movement be tolerated out of 
the rigid line prescribed, and all liberty, all life, be put 
an end to. The watchwords of "Advance," and ^'Pro- 
gress," are the true watchwords. But whether the result 
is true depends on the path trodden. Movement is not 
necessarily "progress," nor energy "advance." The 
Whither go ye, and how ? are important factors. With- 
out endorsing Pope's absurd dictum about a little learn- 
ing, many have serious misgivings whether we are not 
worshipping our nets, and doubt whether the new Gospel 
of the three R's, which has so suddenly converted the 
most opposite parties, or even the Gospel of the whole 
alphabet, is quite so potent a miracle-worker as has been 
supposed. Good nets make poor gods; and the most 
valuable and necessary instruments are apt to disappoint 
their adorers when set up as ends desirable in them- 
selves. There is room for doubt in the opinion of many 
whether the public have considered what they are asking 
for, or the value of what they are getting, when they cry 
out for knowledge. . Rank and wealth, intellect, culture, 
and the public recognition of all these, do not prevent 
sometimes the owner of rank, wealth, culture, and repu- 
tation, from committing suicide. Will a feverish catch- 
ing at the scraps of the beginnings of these mxake the 
poor man happy ? Does the carting into the mind a few- 
bushels of facts to be peddled out again make tne owner 
more of a man? Does any amount of accumulated 
brain-store, if that is all, make the man more of a man, 
or anything better than an animated knowledge-shop? 
-There must be something unsound in the prescription of 



Whether edttcation has begun f ij 

the school panacea to be swallowed like a bolus, whole, 
as the cure for all the ill that flesh is heir to. Men are 
wanted, what is it that makes a man more of a man? 
The three Rs, by themselves ? God help men. Igno- 
rance indeed has been tried now for many hundred years 
as a remedy for lawlessness, and has failed signally. 
Men are not orderly because they are ignorant. Obedi- 
ence is the child of intelligence not of dulness. But 
though ignorance has failed to solve the problem of true 
life, a loud voice of clever violence, keen-witted crime, 
and voluble opinion, throughout all Europe is asserting, 
and is itself an unconscious example carrying conviction, 
that mere culture has failed equally, and large numbers 
are eager to upset anything and everything above them 
on this plea ; whilst they consider throat-cutting the only 
cure for the cultivated classes. It may be that both 
sides are right, and both wrong ; but at all events there 
are both sides. And power on the one hand, and num- 
bers who claim enlightenment on the other^ maintain 
each of them that the other is a failure. Such are some 
of the varieties of opinion and practice. As long as this 
is the case a confident foreclosing of the inquiry " What 
is education?" and, "How can it best be dealt with?" 
is not justified by facts. The question can still be asked, 
and can still admit of infinite discussion, " Whether edu- 
cation in any true sense has begun ? " And it cannot be 
judged an unfitting subject for a working man to bring 
his facts and experience to bear on this. How can those 
who have never taught a child be authorities on teach- 
ing? Is teaching the only subject in which ignorance is 
knowledge ? 



CHAPTER 11. 



THE THEORY OF TEACHING. 



The Philosopher s Stone. 

Knowledge is power, says the Proverb. Such is the 
general beHef, and it accounts for the high value set on 
knowledge. For power is undoubtedly the ultimate test 
of the worth of all things. Whichever way it is taken 
this must be the case. The first originator of anything 
must be greater in power than that which is originated. 
Or again, the supremacy, which puts all things under its 
feet at last, must be supreme in power; whatever the 
secret of that power may be. The highest power with 
which we are acquainted on earth is life. No further 
proof of this assertion is needed than the obvious fact 
that man rules supreme over all the world in which he 
finds himself, by virtue of his superiority in life. His 
power of life makes him the master of material forces ; 
his power of life makes him master over all lower forms 
of life j and superior power of life makes man himself 



The great limitation, 19 

master of men of a lower order. The aim of man there- 
fore must be to attain the highest kind of Hfe. And all 
the difficulties of all the worlds are solved as soon as it is 
known wherein true power consists. But first of all man 
himself must be considered, and the conditions of his 
existence which determine for him in what way, and how 
far, the pursuit of power is possible. Nevertheless as all 
men are men, and man's nature is common to all, there 
must be something in the life of all which under all 
circumstances, however varied, enables each life to be 
sufficiently trained in true power. Any true definition of 
power must apply to the life of every human being under 
all circumstances, or there would be forms of human life 
having no share in the common lot of human nature. 
True power therefore must be that property of life which 
beginning with the lowest is exercised and trained in 
every individual, passing by an ascending scale into 
higher exercise as the life obeys and practises its laws 
more and more. To begin then at the lowest point. 
Before anything else can be done man must provide for 
his bodily life and its needs. This great limitation meets 
the ordinary ideas of perfection at once. These needs 
must be satisfied first. Till this is done nothing else can 
be done. The vast majority of mankind are compelled 
by the laws of nature to work for their daily bread, and 
always will be compelled to do so. This fact proves 
conclusively that the work for daily bread, since it is the 
natural law for man, and everything else is exceptional, 
is a noble order of life. What the race as a race is set to 
do must be a fitting exercise of the faculties of the race. 
The bodily life and its needs are so exacting that they 

2 — 2 



20 The saleable article, 

demand most of the time that men have at then* disposal, 
and will continue to do so for ever. The first form of 
power will be found here. Man's work, that is to say, 
the active and intelligent use of man's life, supplies these 
needs. The life itself by an exercise of the faculties 
belonging to life maintains the iiife. Accordingly in the 
first instance the ability to provide the sustenance of Hfe, 
and all those requirements which are necessities in the 
complicated organization of civilized hfe, presents itself 
with a claim to be power. And it is a very true form of 
power. Its main characteristic is bodily strength and 
skill, employed either by a small exercise of mind, or by 
mind moving in very narrow limits. The body is the chief 
agent. This fact at once decides the class of power. 
Intellectually it is a low class, as comparatively little 
intellect is called into play in the first instance. Morally 
it is a high class, inasmuch as the body is the great 
touchstone of the feelings and emotions, testing and 
tempting, a perpetual referee in matters of right and 
wrong, the fierce exactor of work, and betrayer of the 
dissolute, the supreme arbiter, v/hether as servant or 
tyrant, of all mundane transactions, the teacher, which 
punishes with pitiless severity; the tempter, which allures 
with deadly fascination ; in a word, the absolute deter- 
miner, according as it is dealt with, of the good and evil 
that befalls man, and of all the structure of the world 
made by man. Thus either in itself, or in the qualities 
called out by it, this work of the majority does give 
scope for all that makes life truly valuable, even though 
the market price of it may not be valuable. For this is 
its great peculiarity ; it has a very definite market price. 



Efficient life true education. 21 

All these forms of work, and results of work, can be 
bought and sold. The market price therefore of any 
commodity, and the market price, that the man who 
produces any commodity can command, is the first test 
of value and of power; inasmuch as the price in the 
market is a rough and ready judgment on all the lower 
exercise of life, the work, that is, by which mian is com- 
pelled in the first instance to get the means by which he 
lives, and to which he must turn his attention before he 
can do more ; the work of the human race as a race. 

Nov/ power, or efficient life, is proposed as the aim of 
every true educator. And the market price of any pro- 
duct, or of the producer, is an important factor which 
cannot be left out in education. Whether the market 
price is high or low for the work done by any individual, 
no man can aff"ord to keep all his life apart from it. No 
man can escape from its range. Few indeed are able to 
devote all their lives to mere research or knowledge. 
Fewer still would wish to stand aside, if they could, from 
all that their fellow men are doing and suffering. Market 
value meets the educator at every step as a most impor- 
tant factor in his search for power. There is no greater 
mistake than to disregard the natural laws by which life 
works ; unless indeed it is exaggerating the importance 
of one or another part, and turning your hewer of wood 
and drawer of water into a god, because of the immediate 
advantage of his help. 

Power therefore is the end proposed. But already 
on the threshold a great difficulty of determining what is 
power has appeared; and market price, which the majority 
would consciously or unconsciously elect, has been shown 



2 2 The best life-power, 

to have claims indeed but very imperfect claims. What 
then is power ? Till something is settled on this question 
education is at a standstill, or blindfold. It is obviously 
the province of a teacher to know why he teaches, 
as well as what he teaches, and how to teach. Not 
unfrequently the first beginning of true work is a clear 
perception of the value of the work to be done, and 
the ability to excite interest by giving that perception 
to others. To leave for the present the dictum 
"Knowledge is power" on one side as an obvious fallacy, 
since to know without the power to use is possible, is 
common, and not unfrequently ridiculous ; and passing 
by all other random dicta about power; the practical 
question presents itself in a very definite shape. The 
practical question is. What process will turn a man out 
best fitted to do life work, and enable mankind as a race 
to do their best ? As definite a question as the question 
"What process is necessary to make a deal box?" And 
the first answer to this question is equally definite and 
clear; that process, namely, which best produces power 
in man himself, and makes him capable of employing his 
faculties in the best way. This gives a starting point at 
once. Power in a man's self is the work of education ; 
and how to produce it the inquiry. 

As this is a practical question, put forth with the 
intention of finding what a teacher and trainer ought to 
do in order to train the best men, by producing power in 
the man himself, and why he ought to do it? and how? 
a practical example of the commonest form of power, 
compulsive force, and its effects, will serve as a platform 
to begin on. 



Parable of the Slave. 23 

The slave toiling beneath his master's whip is a 
living parable coextensive with created things. It con- 
tains within its compass the whole problem of power; 
that is, of the right or wrong use of life. On the one 
side is skill and strength wielding the whip ; and on the 
other an embodiment of life producing saleable work 
under the lash. And the vulgar call the visible Whip, 
and its influence, power ; and the product, wealth ; and 
the whip is an instrument through which the mind of the 
master works. In other words, there exists in the mind 
of the man, who uses the whip, a quality, by whatever 
name it may be called, or be it nameless, which comes 
to light in force, the force of the whip, or any other force 
that gives it expression. And the slave, a living being, 
has that belonging to him, which the whip and force can 
deal with; he obeys the whip; and the whip-holder is 
called his master, and is said to have power over him ; 
and by this power gets a certain kind of marketable 
goods. So far all is straight-forward, and clear. He has 
power over him. But what power.? and power over 
what .? These questions require to be settled. There is 
the hard compulsive power of the whip, which man 
wields over man, on the one side ; and there is the man 
who obeys the whip on the other. What then is the 
whip master of? It is master of a certain amount of 
movement of arm or leg. That is all. But a man is 
something more than arm, and leg, and body. What 
becomes of the man ? At every stroke of the lash the 
real creature, as distinct from the working machine, 
hides itself. At every stroke of the lash, the love and 
hate, which is the man himself; and which, whenever he 



24 The lash and life, 

does man's true work, passes into that work, retires 
farther and farther into the depths of the cavernous heart 
out of sight. And the more the lash is appHed the 
greater becomes the unapproachable distance between 
the master of the lash, and the real being before him, or 
any true revelation of the inner life of that being. The 
whip has power over an animated machine. But every- 
thing belonging to the being of a man as man; everything 
by which higher truths of the animate or inanimate crea- 
tion are perceived and interpreted; everything in fact which 
makes man distinct from a moving animal, or even from 
a skilfully constructed engine, retires before the aggressive 
pretensions of force, and its stoHd lash, into inaccessible 
fastnesses, unheeded, and despised ; until in some hour 
of vengeance the pent up torrent of life leaps forth, and 
bears wild witness to the supreme energies of the inner 
being, which the kings of fools-paradise have long treated 
as non-existent, because they did not see it, and chosd to 
consider their control over outward movement, power. 

This is the great parable of force dealing with life, 
and the worth of life. All outward movement might 
be conceived of as carried out by beautifully subtle 
machinery. Few pause to consider what a vast amount 
of work once done by human hands, or living creatures, 
is now done by machines. In other words, machines 
have taken the place of man over a wide area, and in 
that area man may be looked on as non-existent. No 
one doubts that this process will go on, and that machines 
will take the place of man more and more in all external 
work. But it is easy in imagination to carry this idea 
further still, and with equal truth. There is a hard. 



Intellectual automatons, 25 

mechanic power of intellect, which in theory always, and 
in practice often, is quite disconnected from man's real 
self, and his true nature as man. Professor Babbage's 
calculating machine is an illustration of this. And fol- 
lowing out this view, all work of brain that deals with 
any subject whatever separable from the qualities which 
make man man, and are distinctive of the excellence of 
humanity, can be conceived of as carried out by ex- 
quisitely subtle machinery. Marvellous automata can 
be imagined of force, bodily, and intellectual, able to 
carry on, when set in motion, every process of mechani- 
cal skill, every process of the visible structure of society 
and government. We are not without knowledge of this 
automatic action. What is instinct with its untaught, 
unteachable, inborn perfection belonging to all the race, 
always, but an example of a lower life endowed with 
faculties not only far exceeding those of mankind, but 
absolutely beyond the imagination of man to conceive 
how the action is caused ? Consider the prophetic care 
of the white butterfly ; how miUions of butterflies, year 
after year, lay their eggs on the cabbage, with which they 
have no affinity in life, but which is to feed, when they 
are dead, the grub born from those eggs. Go to the 
sohtary wasp, see him prophesy what is to come after his 
death, when he catches the green caterpillar, and per- 
forms that most delicate surgical operation with invari- 
able success of stinging it exactly at the right spot with 
the right amount of poisonous eff"ect to paralyse and not 
to kill ; then see him take the little curled up creature, 
and pack him closely in the circular hole where his Qgg 
is laid, for use after his death. Observe the mathemati- 



26 The automaton m Shakespear, 

cal skill of the bee. Go build a nest, if you can ; to say 
nothing of the power of passing by pathless ways of the 
carrier pigeon, the swallow, the dog, and innumerable 
other instances of the preternatural, with which we are 
so familiar that they no longer strike us as preternatural ; 
and find yourself in the presence of a lower life gifted 
with a practical ability infinitely greater than anything 
that man with his higher life possesses ; so infinitely 
greater, that human mind cannot discover^ or frame any 
theory to account for it; whilst as far as the creature 
itself is concerned, to all appearance this ability is purely 
automaton work. Shakespear with his keen insight saw 
this fact of power apart from higher life, and has created 
such a feelingless living automaton. He has gifted it 
with marvellous powers. The elements and all ele- 
mental forces obey it; it rules as a king the material 
world; and though Shakespear has thrown round his 
creation the graceful fancy of a poet's mind, and made it 
harmonise with the magic picture he drew, nevertheless 
Ariel is nothing more or less than an animated auto- 
maton, a creature without feeling, soulless, like the 
mermaid of Anderssen, or the German fictions, a beauti- 
ful embodiment of power, divorced from all that makes 
the life of man loveable, and tender, and true. Such 
automata however, as Shakespear has shown, would 
make a great show in the world. They would figure as 
external agents of a high order, busy with innumerable 
problems of calculation, statistics, science, marshaUing 
other people's thoughts, and exercising any kind of co- 
ercive power as well as all the fact-collecting power in the 
universe. But powerful, and honoured, as these auto- 



The intellectual lash, 27 

mata would be, they would be separated eternally from 
the feeblest, tenderest birth of human thought and feel- 
ing, requiring man to think it, and feel it. The distinc- 
tion is very real ; it is a most vital truth ; and it cannot 
be disregarded in education. Mental factory wheels and 
the scintillations of Hfe, are different in kind, and might 
belong to two different worlds, though both are packed 
together in man's being. So also with the power of the 
whip, which belongs to automatic brain-work. It makes 
no difference whether, as in the case of the master and 
the slave, the whip is in one hand and the work is ex- 
torted from another ; or whether the whip-power and the 
work are in the same person. Whether the bodily needs 
and the great money-whip, or the lusts of the head and 
the great honour-whip lash out the work, the result is the 
same ; though some whips can whip more out of a man, 
and get nearer to his human feelings than others. The 
hard will, however much the owner may exult in its 
action, is only a whip-power after all. This truth is the 
same truth whether force finds expression in the master's 
whip and the slave's work, when the work is exacted at 
the price of exile from all true feeling, all sympathy with 
the slave; or it is embodied in the forceful intellect 
tearing its way into the external knowledge of externals 
at the price of exile from life. The same law holds 
good throughout the whole world of man's being as an 
example of true life. The same law holds good in all 
creation where outward shape is, as it were, a body ani- 
mated by the thought and life within, which have called 
it into existence, and have made it like a shell, holding, 
as a shell does, a living something within to which it 



2 8 -Li fa interprets life. 

owes its existence. Let it be laid down once for all that 
wherever the hard intellect and automaton calculator 
has to deal with an array of facts, or with any external 
working of things, animate or inanimate, there the intel- 
lectual automaton reigns supreme. Again, wherever the 
hard intellect deals with the shell which contains the life, 
whether the life be the Hfe of nature, or of literature, 
or of art, then also the intellectual automaton can do 
much, and seems to do still more. It can lash the out- 
side, and get at all outside work, and be master of it, 
and enjoy the wealth and honour that the multitude 
always accord to the whip-holder, and visible strength. 
But man after all is the origin of everything done by 
man j and poetry, and prose, and painting, and architec- 
ture, music, and sculpture, as well as the food we eat, 
and the clothes we wear, are one and all embodiments 
of certain portions of man's life set in action. The 
moment a man puts forth anything in a shape, audible, 
or visible^ he puts forth part of himself, a part of his 
mind, a birth of his life, and the ultimate judgment on 
all of it must be a judgment on mind, and life. And 
these mind-creations by their nature are subject to the 
same conditions as the life of which they are the out- 
come, and, as far as they go, represent it as faithfully as 
if they were separate living beings. If the automaton 
whip can whip its way into the slave's affections, then the 
intellectual automaton can whip his way into the other 
embodiments of affection and life. But all the delicate 
thought which is born into the world, all the glory of 
true feeling, all the subtle play of the higher realities, can 
only be reached by kindred spirit j and true life abhors 



Mind-creations defy the whip. 29 

the violence, repudiates automaton skill, loathes brutal 
strength of brain, and retires- deeper and deeper before 
unfeeling force ; whether the heart-truth be enshrined in 
the living body, or in that which the life has made, the 
painter's picture, the speech of architecture, the melody 
of music, or words that burn, one and all are the lan- 
guage of an inward life ; that is to say, are an inward life 
which has taken to itself a body. One and all are the 
offspring of travail throes, sweet or painful, of human 
parentage ; and no one ever yet in all the worlds wrested 
a truth worth having from an unloving and unloved 
owner. The old, old story is as true nov/ as in the 
infancy of time. The giants made war against heaven 
only to find themselves at last buried beneath a heavy 
load of earth. Giants, or pigmies, it matters not. And 
still it is the same : 

" True beauty dwells in deep retreats, 
Whose veil is unremoved, 
Till heart with heart in concord beats, 
And the lover is beloved." 

Tender subtle feeling is tender subtle feeling, whether 
the words flow from lips beloved that speak them face 
to face, or whether they flow from lips, which in days of 
old gave them in trust to those dumb messengers, so 
faithful and so true, books, that from age to age keep 
safe, year after year, their treasure of enchanted life; 
waiting to be waked, whenever a true prince comes. The 
automaton intellect has no place here. The slave dealer 
might as well woo with his lash the love of the speaker of 
living speech, as the hard intellect expect to win its way 



30 Wooing with the whip. 

by force into the heart of the written thought. The fairy- 
princess heeds them not. Both deal and deal successfully, 
if strong enough, with the husk and outside of that which 
they approach; both fail conspicuously, if not strong, 
even in that ; and both stand for ever outside the walls 
of the home in which true beauty dwells and lives with 
those who love. A prayer for gentle, reverent, loving 
admission into the heart of that, which having been born 
of life, retains for ever the nature of that life from which 
it was born, must always be the beginning of true power. 
The humble watchful eye, which can recognise the exist- 
ence of inner loveliness, is needed, if the learner is ever to 
read the high and varied emotions of noble minds, and by 
reading hope to kindle high and varied power in himself. 
This is a very practical question. The investigation 
has led to the recognition of three distinct forms of 
power, all of which however are combined in the perfect 
man, and are only misleading when separated. First, 
there is the mechanic power which does manual and 
bodily work that demands little exercise of intellect, or 
an exercise of intellect along a narrow track ; this power 
is to a great degree amenable to force. Secondly, there 
is the automaton power, where the hard intellect assumes 
the mastery over the whole external world ; but, as far as 
it acts alone, stands outside the whole realm of life and 
feeling. And thirdly, there is the living power of true 
feeling, which is peculiar to man as man, and which uses 
the intellect as an instrument, and the body as an instru- 
ment, bringing into perfect harmony of glorious perfection 
the whole nature of man. Properly speaking the division 
is twofold, and the being of man comprises instrumental 



Instrumental power and living power. 3 1 

powers of body and intellect j and living powers of love 
and sight, by which life sees truth with a mental eye, and 
loves truth. Love is not learnt. Love sees. Nothing 
can be more practical than this. Those who have followed 
the statement of facts already made, and who give their 
assent to what has been said, as a true statement of the 
facts of human nature, have already decided absolutely 
that all work which deals with the outer properties, and 
skin, as it were, of things, all carting in by mere memory 
of that which having been dropped in can be dropped out 
again, fails to fulfil the requirements of the higher training. 
And also, that all hard, unfeeling, irreverent temper unfits 
the learner, however strong in intellect he may be, for 
the higher ranges of power, which can only be attained 
by giving and taking the thrill of true feeling, and by an 
endeavour to enter into communion with the speakers 
however humble. These are truths, realities as certain as 
that the sun gives light. But both can be denied by the 
blind. 

This most important definition of power as twofold, 
instrumental power, and living power, divisions of man's 
being, both contained always in greater or less degree, 
balanced or unbalanced, within man himself, establishes 
the first great proposition from which the higher education 
starts ; and fixes on a firm basis both what kind of work it 
ought to do, and what its aim ought to be. Higher 
education must work on subjects that embody the higher 
life; and the work must be carried on with a view to 
beget and train the higher life. All memory work, as 
such, all the mechanic and skin-deep arts, by the very 
fact that they are only concerned with outside action, are 



32 Love must woo work. 

narrowed, each of them, to their own functions, confined 
within the Hmits of their own dexterity, represent nothing 
but an external need satisfied, and in no way carry their 
votaries into the true world of man, but stand outside 
the sacred circle of humanity, and only look in through 
a window at the place in which all that is tender, and 
true, and lovely, dwells, and will dwell secure, in spite of 
all efforts to break in. They do not therefore get beyond 
the outer court of Education, or compete as worthy 
subjects for the mind to exercise itself upon when the 
theory of teaching comes forward to be judged. Teaching 
in its higher sense is not concerned with any form of 
mere dexterity, however dexterous it may be. Yet it is 
well to remember that even the mechanic, and skin-deep 
arts and professions, being after all children of mind, do 
not drop all trace of their high origin ; and, as far as 
they have sprung from true feehng and honest thought, 
demand the sam.e kind of homage from those who would 
truly excel as the higher subjects do. The learner must 
submit himself to their sway. Even the shoemaker has 
his love for his work, the artist feeling, and the pride of 
skill, and would not sell the little fancy boot, " which he 
had made," he said, "in a moment of enthusiasm." 
Common work can be loved. All that is of life can be 
loved. And the village maiden must be wooed like a 
queen, if she is to be won; not in such courtly wise 
perhaps, but with as sincere a heart. And he, who would 
end wath being true lord of anything, must begin by look- 
ing up with awe, and respect, and love, at the skill he 
hopes to win ; and worship as above him that which he 
aspires to make his own. 



The power of life, 33 

Something has now been said of the region in which 
true power is to be found. Something also of the attitude 
of the true searcher for power. True power can only be 
found in the high er works of the higher life. The mechanic 
arts, and skin-deep specialities, and even the really 
wonderful feats to us, which can be conceived of as per- 
formed by an intellectual automaton of an Ariel-like 
capacity, or gifted with the unteachable perfection of 
instinct, have been set aside as too narrow in scope, and 
too much separated from the distinctive excellence of 
human life to come within the range of the best mental 
training, excepting as stepping stones to higher things. 
And the inquiry has been limited by this judgment to 
such works of life as man does distinctively as man, and 
not as an animal that moves. But what is life? And 
how does life act ? The fact of life is so familiar, that a 
curious ignorance of what life is, is often found in dealing 
with life and its outcome. First what it is not No 
subject which is put together piece by piece is living. 

Life and living work has that within it which may 
sleep, lie dormant, but never dies, and which not only 
does not die but is a quickening spirit, acting like a 
germ in other lives which it reaches. There is a subtle 
play of life on life, a strange faculty of changing, and 
transmitting, and passing into whatever it really touches, 
to come out again in fresh combinations with a new 
birth of new creations and growths, all of which have a 
life of their own, whilst nevertheless all owe the beginning 
of that life to the germs they have received. In this way 
the whole world is incessantly interchanging for good or 
evil germinating ideas, which pass on, and on, and on, 



34 .Life in books, 

sometimes traceable, sometimes not, but always in their 
aggregate growth forming the character of every nation, 
city, family, or individual. This is the essential power 
of life and lifework, in which its transcendent claim to be 
considered the great practice ground of training and 
teaching lies. It is the most important factor of all 
in the sphere of practical work. And it makes no 
difference where the life comes from. Time, place, 
ages back in the old world, inhabitants of kingdoms long 
since gone, it matters not. The life influence is the 
same, and exercises the same procreative power in the 
same deathless way, whether it is clothed in the spoken 
word proceeding from living lips conveying messages of 
glowing life to ears that actually hear the voice ; or 
whether it is a voice from — "the mighty minds of old '^ — 
a seed wafted down the centuries, with its seed-life in 
itself after its kind, floating, so to say, in the air, which 
Rights, and takes root again; and when it takes root 
enters into the life it has touched, and becomes a new 
form of life, to go forth again on new missions. Life is 
ever acting in this way. The living thought and feelings 
of men live in the language of men ; and literature is 
nothing less than the company, as far as the words reach, 
of those that spoke the words. Words are the life. 
Because we have only a section of their lives in this way, 
which we cannot enlarge or change, the fact that it is 
living is often lost sight of. But the power it has of 
begetting life, its own life, in those who receive it, suffi- 
ciently proves that it is living. 

Though like a seed, it must be planted, or it cannot 
change and grow, yet like a seed, when planted it does 



/ " Life ttndying, "35 

change and grow, for the life is in it. Again the perception 
of life in books is much clouded by the fact that the 
glorious messages from the life of the ancient world have 
reached us in an obsolete shape; and the use of the 
term "dead languages" serves to darken the truth still 
more, and make the unthinking look on the literature 
itself as dead, and buried, and dug up out of the grave, a 
sort of mummy, curious, perhaps wonderful, but for all 
that dead, and past, and out of date. 

Nevertheless it would be quite as absurd to talk of 
a dead picture, or a dead Cathedral, as of a dead lan- 
guage ; if by dead we mean any diminution of vitality 
because of time. A picture is not dead because it was 
painted thousands of years ago. The paintings on the 
walls of Pompeii speak to us to-day with precisely the 
same meaning with which they spoke to those who saw 
them fresh and gleaming from the painter's hands. The 
Nineveh sculptures give to our eyes their frank, bold mes- 
sage of hunting, or of war, with no less vivid reality than 
they did to the Assyrian, who put his mind into them 
first. The birds and animals on the walls of Egypt might 
have been painted yesterday, as far as their meaning 
goes. There is no death here. They are not dead, they 
do not die ; the enchanted life remains for all who have 
power to break the spell. 

Still less- are the languages dead, with their great 
streams of life running clear and strong with unabated 
force, where he who lists may drink, and never find 
them fail. It pleased the old writers to take this imagery 
of a fountain ever flowing, and in no untrue parable 
draw from Helicon an inspiration of higher worlds, or 

3—2 



2)6 The creative energy of liter ahire, 

make Castalia flush their veins with divine pulsations. 
And flowers not of earth were gathered, fed by those 
sacred streams, and all their souls were bathed in the 
brightness of a better world, which they in turn strove to 
communicate to less favoured men. They saw this 
mystery of undying life, which yet is no mystery; they 
saw how it cannot stop, how it perpetually is born again 
with creative energy in some soul it has touched, and 
wherever it finds kindred life is absorbed into it, to come 
out again in strange marvels of new life working, as the 
old and the new blend, and shape themselves according 
to the latest possibilities of time into something never 
seen before, yet as surely life of the past, as it is life of 
the present, and has a present existence, and is going to 
breathe itself hereafter into the future also. This trans- 
mission of life from the living, through the living, to the 
living, is the highest definition of education. And the 
highest education and teaching must find its exercise 
ground in that region where the highest life is found. 
This is a self-evident proposition. Other works may be 
even more necessary, as bread is more necessary than 
Shakespear's poems; but this necessity of first getting 
bread, and then getting house-room, and then getting this, 
and then getting that, however far the catalogue may be 
taken of things which have to be taught and done before 
the highest education begins, does not alter the fact, that 
the highest education must work in the region of the 
highest life. Now literature is the highest thought of 
the highest men in the most perfect shape. It is the life 
of the highest men transmitted. And this transm.ission 
of life takes place in any great degree through literature 



i 



Fructifying thottght-germs, 2>7 

only; that is, through words that have life, not metapho- 
rically and in a figure, but as truly, whether spoken this 
moment, or a thousand years after the time when they 
first leapt forth from living lips freighted with a portion 
of the speaker's mind. The power of begetting like 
feeling, and becoming incarnate again in living men 
never leaves them. Every generation by a familiar 
miracle receives the life-germs of the former world under 
new aspects of hfe, and with new generative energy. If 
it were possible to resolve to its elements the composite 
being of any educated man, what a marvellous revelation 
it would be of processes of implanted hfe. An infinite 
variety of hving thoughts would be seen dropped in from 
books, which then put out tendrils, and mingled in a 
thousand ways with the feelings and sights on every side, 
absorbing and assimilating nutriment from them until 
they became a growth of their own kind. Then, as time 
goes on, the growth is grafted and regrafted, and crossed 
and recrossed, with all manner of fructifying thought- 
dust, pollen Irom fields innumerable, and it all grows, 
and is pruned, as it grows, by experiences, that move 
Hving through the ages from the first utterance of prime- 
val man, till at last it is gathered up into the powerful 
character of the educated man, able himself to become 
an originator of life to those who come after. Thus the 
old life is for ever entering into fresh combinations with 
the new, thought blending with thought, and spirit 
passing into spirit, until none can tell what part each 
separate influence has had in producing the final expres- 
sion of power. All that is known is that Hfe has been 
sowed, and grown into new forms of life. Such is Htera- 



38 Unconscious revelations. 

ture at work. It would be a mistake however to allow 
ourselves to look upon the highest excellence attained as- 
hy any means the most interesting, or the most effectual 
of the workings of this life. A man can enjoy a land- 
scape without being either a poet or a painter. There is 
much use in many things with little understanding of 
them. And without doubt this power of life penetrates 
down, and permeates social strata which are unconscious 
of its existence. A still greater number advance, with 
unwilHng steps at present, but a little way. Yet this 
wide world, in which all the highest thoughts, the greatest 
deeds, the most noteworthy experiences of mankind live 
in a region of their own, is so remarkable a fact in the 
history of the human race, and in itself so wonderful, 
that to stand even on the outer edge of the magic circle, 
and merely know the existence of the kingdom within, 
lifts a man, even without any will of his own, into a 
different sphere. As standing on an Alp, and gazing 
into Italy, would of itself reveal another type of land to 
the most ignorant English villager, though it left him in 
his ignorance, save only the effect of that look. Perhaps 
the truth of this may be made somewhat more plain, by 
supposing for a moment, that by one sharp incision the 
knife of unpractical Folly could perform the operation of 
cutting out the whole knowledge of ancient existence, 
and Greek and Latin literature and art, with all their 
ramifications, from the life of the ordinary Englishman, 
and modern England. It is difficult to imagine what 
would be left. It is a patent fact that not one shoot of 
English higher life exists which is not traced back to 
roots of ancient life. Nay even if the minds of those 



The philosopher s stone. 39 

whom the actual knowledge cannot be said to reach were 
out of the atmosphere of that knowledge how stunted 
their lives would be. The whole nation would sink to 
a lower level, a level so niuch lower that it cannot be 
imagined. Our very language would be a different in- 
strument, deadened, and blunted, with the keen edge of 
its meaning gone. The idlest, the most ill-taught school- 
boy has that within him, which he knows not of, of this 
working of life on Hfe. Even those who revile it know 
that it exists, and stand one inch higher by despising it 
even. That vast empire of glorious life in which all the 
greatness of the past lives and moves, is a realm conse- 
crated to Power. Its boundaries are being extended day 
by day as life meets life and creates new life by meeting. 
It is hard, perhaps impossible, by any words, or any 
imagery to do more than suggest by far-off hints the eter- 
nal action and reaction of the thought-hfe, its ceaseless 
energy, its invisible magic, its all pervading presence, its 
complete mastery, its unity of continuous movement, in 
a word, its life. Man's knowledge of living creatures 
makes him limit his ideas of life to certain recurring types 
of body, unconscious that a creative energy has gone forth 
from himself, and is ever going forth, which is not limited 
by the body, and exists independent of the lips from 
which in the first instance it was breathed, though always 
passing into human frames again. This life of living 
thought, which is both a disembodied, independent ex- 
istence, and at the same time incarnate in bodily shape 
baffles man's expression, inasmuch as it is absolutely 
unique on this earthly globe. There is a subtle 
alchemy in life meeting life which finds no parallel 



40 The power-alchemist. 

in any known fact. But the alchemists unconsciously 
shadowed it forth in their dream of the philosopher's 
stone. 

Life meets life in the living crucible of the mind. 
And all things thrown into that living fire are fused into 
a new creation. The philosopher's stone is found, which 
has the power in very truth of turning all baser metals 
into gold. The philosopher's stone is found in the great 
crucible of true education. The educator is a power- 
alchemist. He applies the flame of Hfe, and man in 
himself becomes power. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE THEORY OF TEACHING. 

Legs not Wings. 

The object ot education is to produce power in a 
man's self; and the distinction between mechanic work 
and life work, between automaton intellect and true feel- 
ing, forms the basis of educational science and of teach- 
ing. Like all great principles the more it is acted on 
the more practical its scope is seen to be. One conse- 
quence follows at once that life can only be trained to 
its highest perfection by processes ot life. This decides 
that however useful, or necessary, certain forms of skill, 
and certain branches of knowledge are, they do not 
belong to the teaching and training of the higher life, 
because of the absence of the very elements of higher 
life in them. Bread is necessary, poetry is not neces- 
sary; but this does not make a baker higher than a poet. 
Nevertheless, in discussing education even well taught 
men constantly put the baker above the poet, and trium- 
phantly close their argument when they have proyed one 



42 The bake7^ and the poet. 

subject more necessary than another, as if there was 
nothing more to be said on the question. It is however 
an absolute certainty from what has already been proved 
that the domain of life and thought must be the exercise 
ground in which any system of producing the highest 
intelligent power can be conceived as possible. And the 
highest thoughts of the highest minds put forth in the 
most perfect shape must be the study of all who are 
to be taught to think, and to put forth thought in 
shape. Add to this that all the knowledge of what 
man has done in the world also passes through litera- 
ture, and is only received from literature, and the baker 
must indeed be above the poet if literature is not the 
main educational subject. But let us not hide the fact 
that the baker to the starving is above the poet. There 
must be people to do the low necessary work; and it is 
honourable work. Only it has no claim because it is 
necessary, and honourable, to usurp the place of higher 
things. That education will be best, which whilst as- 
cending to the very highest begins at as low a point as 
possible. Here too language steps in, and claims the 
lowest as well as the highest place, so that it is no luxury 
of the few, but the daily bread of the many. The prac- 
tical work to be done, and all the .particulars and appli- 
cation of these elementary principles remain to be dealt 
with, and will be treated of in their proper place as each 
part naturally comes forward; let it however be laid 
down here, that the science of teaching, like all true 
science, comprises all subjects that can be taught; and 
is set forth in the best way, when it is first stated in the 
abstract, and then the noblest example is taken tp illus- 



Winning love by love. 43 

trate Its principles, and interpret its methods. Those 
who demand a small encyclopaedia, and a varied range 
of technical instruction, are beside the mark. They 
must go to the retail shops and buy their special packets 
of knowledge. The theory and practice of teaching 
does not deal in such things. To resume. The main 
boundaries of education have to be made plain. 

It has been proved that whip-power fails. There 
never yet was true mind-work born of life which mere 
hard force could reach. The limits are narrow indeed 
within which the whip is master; whether it be the whip 
of bread-winning, and the hard necessity of working to 
live, or the whip of intellect, and the pride of strength. 
Force, and presumptuous superiority must be discarded 
for ever from the kingdom of life, and the learner's world. 
Education requires that the right object shall be pur- 
sued, and pursued in the right way. The right object is 
higher life. What then is the right way of attaining 
higher life, since whip-power fails ? The most complete 
definition of the right way is, the whuiing love by love. 
But this definition requires expansion, illustration, and 
practical handling. There are three gradations in love 
when a learner is in the case. First of all, dodlity; that 
condition of mind which presents no hindrance, but is 
ready in a confiding way to obey directions, and take the 
teacher's point of view. Secondly, love of subject comes, 
when the learner has caught sight of the beauty of the 
life he is wooing, and gladly follows whithersoever he is 
led; and lastly, communion of feeling, when high and 
refined powers of heart and head combined meet on 
terms of equality the royal minds of old, wed them, and 



44 Docility. Pre-working law. 

become in turn parents of glorious births of mind; or at 
all events move amongst the highest forms of life with 
complete insight into their greatness. 

Docility comes first. Perhaps the most practical 
form in which this can be stated is, that the removal of 
hindrances from the learner's mind is the most important 
of all things for the ordinary learner and teacher. The 
laws which precede any work ought to be known, and 
observed. Very often neglect of pre-working law is at 
the bottom of the lifelong incapacity, which a little right 
instruction would have got rid of. As an example of the 
power of pre-working law a single illustration shall be 
given. The world of bare external fact shall prove how 
much depends on the position taken up before work 
begins ; and show the momentous character of this fact 
in dealing with mind. Position is so important that it 
presents the paradox of many a problem impossible of 
solution to the intellect being solved at once by honest 
sight. Any child in this way may see and unravel the 
impossible. That which no calculation, no intellectual 
acumen can discover by brain-power simply needs no dis- 
covery at all, but is seen at once from the right point of 
view. But position, the right point of view, precedes 
work ; and is part of that pre-working law, which no one 
looks to ; and the unhappy worker is plunged into work 
without a thought given to him, whether his mind is 
ready to work or not. Let one example suffice. 

Imagine a field of young wheat, and a man brought 
for the first time to see cultivated land. He would wish 
to know how such a crop was produced. Station him at 
the side, looking at it crosswise, athwart the ridges \ and 



The Wheat-field, 45 

the hardest head, the most trained intellect ever owned 
by philosopher, shall fail to puzzle out any clue to the 
seeming confusion, the hopeless entanglement, the abso- 
lute disorder, that stretches before his eyes, for miles it 
may be, over the great green plain, and shall fail for ever. 
But a little child at the end of the furrows, following the 
plan of the sower's mind, from the sower's point of view, 
along the line the sower worked, simply sees at once, 
from mere sight, without any sense of puzzle, or any 
exercise of intellect, the whole order and design of the 
field. Such is the effect of dociHty, when mind submits 
to follow the track of mind, instead of setting up for 
itself, and working from its own point of view. The world- 
has seen one very conspicuous instance amongst many of 
the value of position, and change of point of view in the 
realms of mind. The Ptolemaic system of astronomy 
was such a wheat-field. Men persisted in standing and 
looking crosswise at the starry universe, thick set with 
fiery seeds, with earth as their central point, because they 
had made up their minds beforehand that earth was most 
important ; and earth was so great in their sight. But as 
soon as Copernicus discarded the self-centre, and took 
the childlike point of view, all the cycles, and epicycles, 
and endless entanglement disappeared. The universe no 
longer revolved round the earth ; the earth difficulty was 
got rid of; and all became plain ; as the earth was found 
to be a planet depending on infinitely greater powers than 
itself, and not supreme. Another form of wrong position 
is, when men make up their mind beforehand to search 
in a given region for that which is not there; as the 
astrologers did, who put life amongst the stars, and then 



46 The disciple not above his master. 

in defiance of common sense laid down laws of prophecy 
amidst the applause of mankind. Or as the biologists do, 
who put life in dying flesh, and hunt for it there, amidst 
the applause of mankind. These are some of the examples 
of the want of docility which takes the wrong point of 
view. But it is clear that the mind, which has produced 
any great work, knew what it was doing in producing it ; 
and the right point of view for a learner must be the same 
as that of the originator. Or, in other words, the lower 
mind must follow the track of the higher mind, or fail in 
proportion to not doing so. This is a simple axiom; 
yet the observance of it would change the world. But if 
this is true in the wheat-field, and similar cases in the 
region of visible facts, which we call facts, as seeming to 
us most divested of ambiguous play of thought, the barest 
presentations of bare finality, how much rather will it be 
true in the great thought-creations, the intricate mysteries 
of feehng, the unique excellence of master minds at work, 
and in all things endowed with the changeful properties 
of life. The living being himself under the whip has al- 
ready been discussed; and indeed no discussion is needed 
to show that knocking a man about does not reveal to 
us his inner nature, or win a way into his heart. In like 
manner the seeing a man daily for years is compatible 
with total ignorance of his real qualities ; especially and 
certainly, when a lower and self-sufficient nature sees, and 
passes judgment on a higher. But many who dimly 
recognise this primary truth, that it is useless to kick a 
man if you want his love, which is only a forcible way of 
saying that the man must be approached from the right 
point of view, do not go on to the next truth, that the 



The Cathedral. 47 

same axiom holds good wherever thought and life has 
been at work. The question always is how to get at the 
inner reaHty. In the case of the wheat-field merely stand- 
ing at the right end was enough to reveal the sower's 
mind and the whole plan of the sowing. Let us proceed 
a step farther in the same direction and examine when a 
subject is manifold and complex, requiring love as well 
as knowledge to master it, in what manner love as well as 
knowledge can be produced. For although there is no 
philtre that can inspire love as fables have said, neverthe- 
less there are certain conditions which must be observed 
before love is possible, without which love cannot exist. 

A great Cathedral is an example of the most visible 
and material kind of a complex subject. It is a glorious 
specimen of thought in stone. But to many it is only 
stone. The stone meets their eyes, and brings no mes- 
sage of the higher life, though it is a most true and living 
expression of higher life. There it stands for all to see, 
vast, immovable, majestic. What is the point of view 
from which to examine it? It strikes the eye as a great 
building. As a great building it shall claim attention 
first. The outward form, as it strikes the eye, shall 
make the first appeal. To begin with, it must be seen. 
An innocent looking statement, but really containing 
within itself the whole question involved. When a 
traveller in the distance, coming to see it, crosses the 
last hill, ten miles off, as he moves slowly over the ridge, 
the massive walls and towers come into sight; and the 
great fabric in the middle of the plain tells him that he 
has before him the famous work of the days of old; and 
there are just sufficient characteristics, (sufficient expres- 



48 Seeing from a distance. 

sion of thought that is) to mark it even at that distance 
as a building intended for worship. Well! he has seen 
it. He turns round, and goes home, and perhaps re- 
counts to the world his infallible judgment on what he 
has seen. For it is those who see afar off that are infalli- 
ble. Such conduct put in this concrete form seems ab- 
surd. Yet so far from being absurd, all the infallible 
wisdom, and most of the knowledge of the world is of 
this kind. Men see a great something afar off, and are 
satisfied at that point. Mere distance deprives them of 
any power to see more; and many do not want to see 
more, and never go near enough to get fuller knowledge, 
though what they do know may be as familiar to them as 
the palms of their own hands. Many have not time to 
see more; many have not strength to get nearer; and so 
it comes to pass that three-quarters of the knowers always 
keep their minds .ten miles off their subjects, and dis- 
course glibly from that distance as if they knew all about 
it, really deceived sometimes in this, because what they 
do know they know so well. But the feeling of a person 
ten miles away for the Cathedral is clearly of a very 
different kind, however intense the seer may think it, 
from the feeling of one who goes closer. Let us advance 
five miles. At a distance of five miles an entirely new 
idea is put before the mind by the mere change of place. 
The Cathedral has now become an important feature in 
the landscape; and a painter could paint a beautiful pic- 
ture, in which the Cathedral should greatly add to the 
beauty, and recall many tender recollections to those 
who know it; but all the time the landscape, not the 
Cathedral, is the main consideration still. The fact how- 



A new world brought close. 49 

ever is clear that the space of five miles has put an en- 
tirely new creation of Cathedral before the mind. Many 
minds always stop five miles short of their subject, and 
are satisfied. In this case, as in the other, what is 
known is known most definitely, the amount of know- 
ledge makes the difference, not its distinctness. The 
first seer is justified in being quite as positive as the 
second over what he does know, if he is content to keep 
to what he does know (a useless hypothesis; none 
ever do). But this positive imperfect knowledge con- 
tains just so much truth as to deceive many. If the last 
five miles are passed the same entire change of mental 
power takes place again. In the precincts all the outside 
is clearly seen, and there is nothing else, the landscape 
has vanished. The mind is filled with the great stone 
personality, which stands out large and strong before the 
eye to the exclusion of every other object, and the whole 
Architecture, its beauty, its variety, its marvellous con- 
struction, its manifold triumphs of art, at once take pos- 
session of the spectator with a completely new set of 
facts, and another world of ideas; and he becomes by 
merely standing there endowed with new perceptions of 
the great creation of life and thought, which the Cathe- 
dral existence embodies. Such is the power of getting 
nearer and nearer to any work of mind. And it makes 
no difference in the fact of increased knowledge that 
sight and nearness is sufficient to give it. In other 
words the effect is the same whether supernatural power 
of sight, and wings lift their possessor into a new world, 
or the new world comes down close to an ordinary mor- 
tal, and reveals itself by being brought close. If a man 
T. 4 



50 The true disciple gets inside. 

can with ease get into a new world by walking ten miles, 
he need not sit still and maunder over not having wings. 
Our new Cathedral world has been reached by feet, but 
we are still at the outside. Many are satisfied with a 
definite knowledge of the outside of beauty. But the 
inside has yet to be seen. And the great purpose does 
not reveal itself till the reader of mind addresses himself 
to the inner truth; and lovingly with a disciple's heart 
and eye, searches out the history, learns the plan, strives 
to enter into the secret shrine of the feelings which 
A\TOUght out the great sanctuary, and to translate out of 
the stone the speech which in very truth is in it. Once 
more mere change of position has brought entirely new 
perceptions of an entirely new creation to the mind. 
The true disciple, with the loving heart, who has the 
feeling which takes him into the shrine within, deals with 
a different set of facts, and is enriched with infinitely in- 
creased power of sight by merely getting closer to the 
great work of mind. Then as he gazes, spirit answers 
spirit, the glorious poem languaged in the stone breaks 
forth into a silent chant of life, voiceless thoughts breathed 
out of the fair structure pass into the gazer's soul and 
enter there, and there revive the memory of noble minds, 
that built their hearts, their blood, their all, into those 
walls. He holds high converse with the dead that live. 
All the inventive genius wakes at the thrill of a loving 
touch. Prayers that passed upwards from praying hearts, 
and as they passed upon their heavenward message were 
petrified in pinnacle and lofty roof, pour forth their in- 
spiration and their faith once more. Anthems caught in 
mid air, rising triumphant towards the throne of God, 



' Mind reads mind. 5 1 

column, and arch, one blended harmony of praise and 
worship, peal their great organ pipes for him whose life 
interprets life; and roll down all their music, from the 
eternal stone, the secret marvels of the old, old years, 
the charmed speech of ages dreaming there, there dream- 
ing in each sculptured coign and niche, so silent yet so 
ready with their story. E'en thus the dumb walls speak, 
and the beam unlocks its secret, and the shut cabinet of 
spirit-knowledge ever opens to a spirit-power, that can 
watch, and wait, and learn. Solitude is there no more. 
Unseen presences sweep to and fro, the void space fills, 
the solid buttresses and towers melt back into the aspira- 
tions out of which they grew. The living growth pro- 
claims its life. The great past lives again, the peopled 
centuries unfold, and throng the quiet scene with count- 
less shapes, as mind reads mind, content to honour, and 
love, and follow, according as it is led. 

Such is the power of getting near, the power of the 
right point of view, when distance is got rid of. Let it 
be assumed that the mind of the spectator receives no 
further training, and is not endowed with higher powers 
by right action, still the great fact stands out with un- 
paralleled significance, that every advance brought an 
entirely new and higher set of ideas into sight, and that 
the mere seeing the new creation of nearer sight put the 
seer in possession of a new world. Let us carry this 
a step further into the domain of the actual life of man. 
Take a homely illustration of this. There is a little 
country town with its unlovely street of flattened houses 
of dreary brick, passed through day by day by one whose 
life work takes him farther on. The same dull picture 

4—2 



5.2 Bricks or realms of love. 

year by year stamps its familiar knowledge on his mind. 
Bricks and windows, windows and bricks, with occasional 
glimpses of faces at the windows. And so it might go 
on for ever, if life lasted for ever. But a day comes 
when one of the unlovely houses in the unlovely street, 
which he has despised the sight of, opens its doors to 
him. He has received an introduction, and he goes in. 
There is a family, an island of life within the bricks. 
A beauty and excellence of noble life is there. The dull 
brick house is brick and dulness no more. Again and 
again those scornful feet forget their scorn, and are 
drawn irresistibly into the charmed circle; till by degrees 
for him all loveliness and truth seems centred there. He 
learns to know it more and more; the whole world be- 
comes glorified by love and life ; the spot is sacred ever- 
more ; it holds all he cares for this side the grave. Such 
is the transforming power of life, and love, and admission 
into realms of love. Once more the power of getting 
near, mere change of position, changes the world, and 
opens new possibilities of learning, whilst the power of 
loving with which the getting near endows the humble 
loving mind enables love to win its full return. And 
this law holds good throughout creation. 

It holds good with living beings. It holds good with 
all things put into shape by living beings in speech, 
or sound, or action. All languages, spoken or unspoken, 
languages that speak to ear or eye, are interpreted by 
this law of procedure. This law holds good with the 
great unspoken language of the voice of God in Crea- 
tion. 

Mind must touch mind. 



The burglar weds not queens, 5.3 

It follows from this that the burglar, who thinks to 
break in by force of intellect, and wrest the secret power 
of such a spirit-home of beauty from the spirit within, 
is little hkely to win the queen who dwells there in her 
home. The burglar intellect will be an outcast ever 
from the home of higher life. 

There is no mystery in the matter. It all follows 
a well-known track. Love must woo love, the loving 
mind of one wilHng to be led gets closer and closer to 
the object of its love, ever clasps with reverent affection 
the beauty it would fain make its own, and strives to 
interpret every great work, be it in stone, or a painting, 
music, poetry, or prose, or any form which noble thought 
of God, or man, has taken, by this same law of interpre- 
tation, the only law that thought-creations obey. This is 
simply the teacher's starting point. He has got a clue, 
a method. The way is cleared of vain excuses for idle- 
ness, and vain boastings of cleverness. The practical 
results of this definition are of the highest importance. 
Not least of these results is the fact disclosed, that the 
work to be done is possible, and can be done. There is 
hope for all. 

Half the bad work of the world arises from want of 
hope, not from want of vigour. That Will-o'-the-Wisp 
hight "cleverness" in schools, and "genius" in more 
sapient regions, has tricked more into "the filthy-mantled" 
pools of conceited ignorance, or hopeless despair, and 
stopped more work, than any other cause, besides being 
at the bottom of much false teaching, and luring nations 
to their destruction by false glitter. Prizes, which few 
can win, are dangled in the air by public opinion. 



54 Genius stoops to conquer. 

Thence comes a fatal facility for skimming over the 
surface, and playing with flowers, and a reputation for 
cleverness, which satisfies many into a life-long lunacy 
of pretentious folly. Still greater numbers sit down with 
folded hands, and will not try to move at all because 
they lack the Will-o'-the-Wisp flash, and whether they 
idle, or despair, agree in the sitting still, and the folded 
hands, and the excuse "it is no use, they are not clever." 
And the teachers leave them untaught, as by theory of 
Will-o'-the-Wisp is reasonable ; and the parents acquiesce 
in this, and support the practice, a fact which by any 
theory is unreasonable. 

When we consider the deleterious fumes that have 
been let loose about genius, and the windbags that con- 
ceit is for ever untying amongst the children of men, it is 
a disenchantment, but a pleasurable one, to find that 
whatever genius may be, it is not anything supernatural ; 
it is not being born with wings whilst ordinary people 
have only legs ; but it begins at all events not by soaring 
above other men, but by coming down, and kneeling, 
and supplicating, and winning a way in, and nestling at 
last in the inmost heart of spirit-power, and learning all 
its tenderest perfection by devotion to its service, patient, 
watchful, long-suffering devotion, and without this there 
is no genius. But if genius thus stoops to conquer, and 
cannot conquer without stooping, then any mind can 
stoop in like manner. Whether it has the final conquer- 
ing power in it, or not, it has at least the power of 
beginning on the same track, and following the same 
track, as far as its strength will carry it. If genius, true 
genius, is thus shown to begin as a most sober, working- 



All have legs. 55 

day possession, then everything below genius comes more 
and more within working range, and the learner's bug- 
bear, or excuse, want of cleverness, disappears. The 
wing theory is convenient for idle learners, and incom- 
petent teachers. For what is the use of trying to fly if 
you have no wings ? or what is the disgrace of not flying? 
So it comes to pass, that all unpalatable work soon falls 
under the head of trying to fly, and one sweeping abso- 
lution of "no wings" gets rid of the undone task, and 
the shame of not having done it, both for the master and 
the pupil. But a true insight into the nature of genius, 
as the faculty that begins by loving exceedingly, and 
getting close through love to the noblest forms of life, 
makes the power of coming close, not the power of 
soaring, the prevailing power. Here is solid ground, 
and right good foothold. All can walk part of the way 
with genius. 

There is no such Iusils natures as a winged breed of 
mankind disporting itself above the wingless crowd. 
There is a path, which all must tread; and all have 
legs. Some move quicker than others, some more 
slowly; but all can move. 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE THEORY OF TEACHING. 

Stupidity baiiished. 

We have arrived now at the definition of the right 
point of view for teacher and taught. They must en- 
deavour to win true power by humbly striving to get close, 
to win a way by love into the heart of the subject they 
deal with. The theory of wings, and soaring, and the 
ethereal, and the empyreal, may now take refuge in the 
hallowed precincts of Cloud-Cuckoo-land, so considerately 
provided for it by the poet of old. It is a comfort to find 
there is no need of flying ; especially for those who are 
unconscious even of the gentlest titillation of nascent 
wings. Having got rid of the cuckoos with their iteration 
of their own name, let us proceed to examine what genius 
really is, or in other words what is the highest form of 
working possible for man ; and how far it is amenable to 
teaching. 

The right point of view for all work has been dis- 
covered. It is the getting under, not over, the subject. 



Eyes shut, ears closed. 57 

and working upward, and inward, closer and closer, by- 
loving observation, to that which has to be known. All 
power begins by loving observation. This will appear 
more and more clearly the moment practical work begins. 
Every work, especially works of genius, must be the 
result of thought. Where does the thought come from ? 
Evolving camels out of the inner consciousness has been 
justly ridiculed in the well-known story. But nevertheless 
there is no fallacy that inhabits more doggedly the youthful 
cranium than this, none which the teacher has to meet so 
often, either not noticing it if his time does not permit, 
and his knowledge, or incessantly wearied by its reappear- 
ance in spite of precept, perpetually at it, like a thrush 
with a refractory worm, half of which it hangs on to, 
whilst the other half slips back into the hole again. 
Beginners always v/ill insist, when told to write a descrip- 
tive narrative, in getting into a corner, shutting their 
eyes, as it were, and forthwith evolving out of their inner 
consciousness. Beginners always will insist, when told 
to construe, in imagining what the great writer ought 
to have said (poor old gentleman !), and forthv/ith pro- 
ceeding to give out their version, in total disregard very 
often of the words beneath their eyes. And what shall 
we say ? The schools of the Prophets have not perished. 
Bear witness those innumerable soothsayers, who, trusting 
solely to the power of divination, boldly set forth the 
unknown day by day in guesses, that are at once marvels 
of folly, and alas ! of a habit of mind that defies teaching. 
The refusal to observe, the dogged obstinacy with which 
they cling to the "wing" theory unconsciously, is the 
most remarkable fact in a teacher's experience of mind. 



58 Something to think about. 

Yet even then, where does the material come from, flimsy 
as it is, which they produce ? If we imagine a man deaf, 
and dumb, and bUnd, endowed v/ith the highest natural 
powers of mind, such a being with all the avenues of 
observation closed would remain a hopeless blank, 
practically an idiot. His ear would bring him no 
messages on which to employ thought ; no sweet voices 
of his kind would stir his pulses with joy; no music 
of bird, or any sound, would break the ghastly silence of 
his soul ; his eye would gather no harvest of delight, or 
terror, his lips could not utter any impulse from within 
so as to become a moving power. Thought, as we speak 
of thought, would be impossible, for — it would be im- 
possible for him to collect any material to think about. 
" Material to think about." That is the heart of the 
whole matter. There can be no thought without material 
for thought. The baby with its wondering eyes for a 
time gathers material even as it takes food, by a natural 
process. It cannot help doing so. After a time the 
curiosity excited by novelty without, and by Hfe within, 
is somewhat satisfied by familiarity with the outside of 
the objects most often seen, or repressed by contact with 
ignorance, and commands to stop unwelcome questions. 
At this point, where the first curiosity ceases, true educa- 
tion begins, by lifting up a little corner of the veil of the 
world of common things, and showing that there is an 
inside as well as an outside to be seen. Thus observation 
instead of curiosity, or rather as a trained development 
of curiosity, begins the work of intelligent progress. 

The first advance on unconscious absorption of ma- 
terial of thought is the implanting a habit of observation, 



Turner and stone-throwing. 59 

that is, of consciously gathering material for thought. 
Here again is solid ground and good foothold, — leg- 
work, not wing-work. Observation is only a better name 
for. patient well-directed work, a name for learning to 
see by getting close, and waiting long on that which is 
worthy of being known. 

It is recorded of Turner, the great painter, that he 
was seen to spend a whole day in throwing pebbles into 
the water, whilst others were working away round him. 
Throwing pebbles into the water ! With what contempt 
a machine-intellect with its mechanic power of turning 
all things into a kind of philosophic ledger, would visit 
such a childish proceeding. How the cold, calculating 
fact-machine would scoff. But there are worlds on 
worlds ; higher worlds with their inhabitants ; and lower 
worlds with their inhabitants ; and the great painter 
working in the world of life, and living thought, knew 
what he was about. His power of observation was so 
great, and his patience and love so unwearied, that with 
his trained eye he could find intense interest, and gather 
lessons above all price from the ripple, and the waves, 
and the play of light, and harmonious discord of varying 
movements from the common curves, made by a com- 
mon stone, falling into common water; over which an 
untrained eye and mind could not spend a profitable 
moment. Before his eyes was spread the ever stationary, 
ever moving mirror, the changeful eternity of light that 
flows, the gliding earthborn light of water, with its strange 
memories of higher worlds, and strange affinities to cloud 
and sky, free beyond all earthly things to come and go, 
still loving to borrow, as it moves, brightness from sky, 



6o The pj'ophet voice. 

and gleams from cloud, or shore, and welcoming in its 
bosom, like a living thing, all images that reach it in its 
course ; he stood and looked upon it, and tried to un- 
lock its secrets, and conscious, or unconscious, of the 
full interpretation, caught some glimpses of the great 
illuminated text of the book of the thoughts of God, 
appreciated the exquisite subtlety of the handwriting of 
speech divine, became a kind of living microscope in the 
power of seeing unknown beauty, and then handed on 
to us non-seers the gain of new discovery to be hence- 
forth part of the possession of the world. A common 
stone thrown into common water could thus become 
a prophet revealing truth. But to whom does the pro- 
phet voice of stones and water speak ? A careful analy- 
sis will shew that the great painter, the genius, could 
see and understand, because he had learnt by years of 
patient work to observe more than other people. The 
child begins its first attempts at drawing by a few 
bounded lines from an unpractised hand, that will not 
do its owner's bidding, and an unpractised mind, that as 
yet has not much bidding to give; and under it he 
writes, cat^ or dog, or cow, as the case may be, and the 
writing is necessary. And unless hand and mind prac- 
tise, that is, work, they will never do more. Turner 
himself, had he been debarred from practising his hand, 
and not permitted to exercise his eye, could have done 
no more. It is quite immaterial to this argument what 
the difference may be between any pupil and Turner 
before they end ; the all important fact remains, that for 
a long time the path of both is the same ; and the still 
more important fact, that the teacher has as his province 



One path for all. 6 1 

that path, and that path only, as far as the external 
aspect both of his own, and his pupil's work, is con- 
cerned. The teacher has no concern with the beyond; 
but the fact that the vast majority never get within sight 
of the point v/here a beyond begins, but remain in the 
limbo of little-boy drawings, and such like, does concern 
him very much indeed. The point at which observation 
begins, and at which it stops, a point very often but little 
in advance of the unconscious vision of the child, is his 
business. The teacher is disgraced when all the result 
of his so-called teaching is the commonplace production 
of the commonplace features of their profession by men 
who are supposed to have been trained. This is not the 
way that genius acts in achieving greatness. The great 
man quickly masters the commonplace outside and husk 
of things, and goes on, and perseveres, and penetrates 
into his subject, and loves it, and sees more than others 
because he loves it, and strives to reproduce what he 
sees. If a painter, he copies, and copies, and copies art 
and nature, with ever increasing skill and insight, till his 
inner consciousness is filled with images capable of being 
made use of at any moment. If a poet, he turns his eye, 
and all the strength of his passionate, impressive heart, 
on those objects which stir his inmost being, because his 
inmost being answers to their life ; and they throb and 
thrill in union with his feeling, filling his soul with music 
half his, half theirs, a new creation of melodious thought. 
And so on through the whole range, down to the school- 
boy in the lowest form, as far as any true work is going 
on. Aye, true work; loving work that is, not the clothes 
and the body, the garments of the man himself alone 



62 Genius defined. 

present, but all his love, and all his strength ; true work, 
that is what it all comes to; and Carlyle's definition of 
genius with a shght, but all-important addition is com- 
plete. 

Genius is an infinite capacity for work growing out 
of an infinite power of love. Take courage each and 
all who have any feeling. Powers spring from love. 
When you find that you have something dear to you, 
which is dull and dry to others, but which you clasp 
close to yourself with joy and yearning; when you have 
a love of some seeming insignificant thing of creation 
and mind, and feel that life may be worth devoting to 
it, know there is within you the beginning of power. 
An acorn is planted in your breast. When your heart 
as a child has any vivid feeling of joy, or sorrow, longing 
or disappointment, do not crush it ; master it, but do not 
crush it; master it, study it, endeavour to quicken it into 
more life, always mastering the emotions produced by 
keen and impressible perceptions ; cherish the impressi- 
ble and keen capacity of feeling ; it is an acorn planted 
in you ; it is the beginning of power. All the great men 
that have lived have acquired greatness in the same way. 
They observed, they worked, they loved. Observation 
is work, and true work lives by love. Without observa- 
tion there is no thought ; without the material for thought 
there is no building. Whether it is pleasurable, or other- 
wise, poet's, or school-boy's, observation is work, and true 
work is love moving, and the ideal, after all that foggy 
enthusiasm can do to mystify, or blowers of glittering 
bubbles can blow, is but the final expression of the high- 
est thought produced by the greatest knowledge and 



Observation, work, love. d'x, 

feeling; and the greatest knowledge and feeling is pro- 
duced by years of patient loving work in a mind origin- 
ally strong and susceptible. No doubt this is a most 
unsatisfactory conclusion, and prosaic, for angels, and 
wings, and the empyreal to arrive at, most unsatisfactory 
for the idler, the fool, and the vainglorious ; but intensely 
comforting, and happy, and real, to an earnest man, who 
is ready to humble himself to watch and wait on what 
he loves. Above all, it is intensely practical for teacher 
and taught. The path is clear; the possibility of mov- 
ing is clear ; the goal is clear also. It gives the certainty 
of success to all without exception, who are willing to 
tread the path. Observation, work, love, these are the 
masters of the world. The teacher, who is a true teacher, 
knows what he is about ; and, if he is allowed to work, 
and external laws do not stop him, can do it. So can 
the taught. Observation, work, love. By these that 
high training is built up, which deals with life and mind 
as all other pursuits are dealt with; and learns faithfully 
from the first rudiments to the complete end ; and no 
more thinks it beneath his notice to do the lowest kind 
of work, than a musician thinks it beneath his notice to 
know his notes. 

But if this is the process by which mind reads mind, 
anyone can begin to do it. The loving eye and working 
hand of genius can be acquired in some degree by all. 
There is no more stupidity in the common acceptation 
of the term, no more incapacity to do well, no contempt 
on the one side, and despair on the other : all can 
be taught to observe, some more quickly, some more 
slowly, but all can do it. Learning is but walking, 



64 No cripple Sy no wings. 

putting one foot before another, and all have service- 
able legs. 

There are no cripples ; far rather the great majority 
are active-minded enough by nature. On the other hand 
there are no wings. The excuse of the idle pupil, and 
the incompetent teacher, does not exist. Work ; simple, 
straight-forward, intelligent work is everything. The 
strong and the weak alike, the genius, as well as the 
slowest mind, must go through the same work, till they 
part company, as perseverance, strength, and love carry 
the best minds farther. There can be no thought till 
there has been observation. There can be no observa- 
tion without work. The highest form of human exist- 
ence is the power of working unweariedly and prevail- 
ingly lovingly wooing, and winning, power by love. 
One word, rightly understood, contains it all— Work. 



CHAPTER V. 

THE THEORY OF TEACHING. 

Market Price, and Real Value. The Auctioneer'' s 
Hanuner, and the Swine-herd's Horn. 

It is useless pumping on a kettle with the lid on. 
Pump, pump, pump. The pump-handle goes vigorously, 
the water pours, a virtuous glow of righteous satisfaction 
and sweat beams on the -countenance of the pumper; 
but — the kettle remains empty: and will remain empty 
till the end of time, barring a drop or two, which finds 
its way in unwillingly through the spout. 

This is no unfair picture of what is going on in the 
school-world to a great extent. The whole theory and 
practice amounts to nothing more than a pouring out of 
knowledge on to the heads underneath. Let the question 
whether this is the right method of proceeding stand 
aside for the present ; and the effect on those who are 
subjected to the process be considered. The people 
pumped on do not like it, and, as soon as they can 
express an opinion, show they do not like it. And they 
T. 5 



66 The kettles and the deluge. 

shortly pass into the ranks of the uneducated, who, because 
they have been pumped on, think they have a right to 
express an opinion on education. That opinion is not 
favourable. Many have got next to nothing, and, both 
by example and precept, inculcate the uselessness of what 
they have gone through ; or its luck ; that it is a lottery 
with a few prizes, and many blanks. Their sons go to 
school again, inoculated already with these ideas ; and 
thus, generation after generation more and more closes its 
mind, and learns to disbelieve in any certain gain. 
Generations of pumpers, and pumped on, turn out 
generations of drenched, confused emptiness. And this 
empty, much-enduring race offers a passive resistance 
that is quite effectual, and is impervious to all ordinary 
efforts. But pumping, and being pumped on, is not 
teaching and being taught. The shut mind defies all 
such attempts to reach it, however zealous, or skilful in 
their way they may be. Nothing can be done as long as 
the lid remains on. But why do the kettles keep the lid 
on? and how can the lid be got off.^ The kettles keep 
the lid on because they do not believe in the deluge. 
Before any teaching can begin, the teacher must know 
what has to be taught ; and the pupil must know that he 
can get it, and that it is worth having when got. Here is 
the evil of the pump. Not the emptiness, but the disgust 
and unbelief in training is the fatal legacy the pumpers 
leave to those who come after. No skill, even when 
there is skill, can reach a boy, who hates what he is set 
to do, who does not believe in the value of it, who does 
not believe that he can get it even if it is valuable. The 
ignorance of the untaught would be of little consequence 



Abolish the pump, train. 67 

if they believed in teaching. But pumping is not teaching. 
Dropping knowledge in is not calling latent power out, 
when knowledge is dropped in. Being pumped on induces 
despair or hatred, or both, in the great majority, and a 
low view of education in all. No teaching in the true 
sense is attempted, no idea of teaching is received ; what 
wonder if the pump succeeds in convincing the young 
that trying to get knowledge is a hopeless and disgusting 
task; and the value small. A profound ignorance of 
work, and its value, possesses the schoolboy-world quietly 
entrenched behind all the natural repugnance to exertion, 
and guarded by all the temptations to play, or worse, 
which swarm round boyhood thick as flies in summer. 
It has already been shown that nothing is required in a 
true system of education which the beginner cannot do. 
This is the first step. The work is possible. The work 
is valuable is the second. The learner must be got at. 
This is the way to get at him. Abolish the pump. Deal 
with each mind. Destroy the idea that knowledge is all 
in all. ■ Train. Make the learner know the value of 
training. Make him see that what he has to do is worth 
the pains bestowed on learning to do it. The life of a 
nation turns on convincing everyone, first, that education 
can be got, and secondly, that it is worth having when 
got. It is not too much to assert, that the great majority 
think truly that education at present is a lottery, and that 
many think it not worth having. The question of value 
is indeed important. Every boy ought to know the value 
of the work he is set to do. Scraps of knov/ledge, the 
cold victuals off other m.ens' trenchers are not valuable, 
and they are not nice. 

5—2. 



6S The chimney- szveep envied. 

Many years ago, one spring morning, in the pleasant 
southern shire, when the sun shone out on the happy 
fields, and touched with loving care the gables of my 
home, well do I remember how I saw, through a film of 
tears, a Uttle chimney-sweep come up the road leading 
to the house, and envied him with passionate envy; for 
he might stay, he had not to go to school, as I had, 
he was not banished. In Romeo's words, had I but 
known them, 

"Every cat, and dog, 
And little mouse, every unworthy thing ; 
Lived there in heaven, and might look on it." 

But I had to go. It is easy to laugh at a child's sorrows, 
but they are very real. That morning more than fifty 
years ago, though many a bitter day, and fierce hard 
year has been faced since, still lives in memory as full 
of pain ; that hour still holds its own as not the least 
wretched of unhappy times. And indeed in the little 
bounded world of the child's life there was only too 
much cause for the feeling, very real grounds for that 
emptiness of heart. School meant nothing less than 
light-hearted liberty gone, and a prison in exchange; 
where every joy, which at that time was joy, was shut 
out ; a prison full of blind fears, daily task-work, sharp 
and constant checks, accompanied by absolute ignorance 
of the why? and the wherefore? From beginning to 
end the whole thing was a painful puzzle, a riddle with- 
out an answer. The envy of the chimney-sweep has not 
passed away out of the boy world, though most boys 
pitch their ■ ambition somewhat higher in these days. 
Most assuredly the aimless riddle is as obtrusive, and 



Value, elementary qttestions. 6g 

unanswerable as ever j but is every day answered in boy 
fashion, by idleness, folly, and vice. Give it an answer. 

The question of value is a very serious one. The 
boy's mind must be got at somehow or other. 

That is the first thing. The teacher ought to be 
perfectly master of the whole question, and not merely 
in a vague way deal in general terms, and ipse dixits ; 
if indeed under such circumstances it ever crosses his 
mind to say anything at all to the boys on the subject. 
But he ought especially, and before all things, to have 
some of the elementary truths about the work at his 
fingers' ends ; and to be able to drill a hole in a dull 
mind by a sharp, quick question, "why he is not hoeing 
turnips, or bird-keeping, earning 35-. 6d. a week instead 
of wasting life and money in school?" and he ought to 
be able to answer his own question, and send a ray of 
light in through the hole he has drilled ; or rather pull 
the answer out of the boy himself by a little dexterous 
manipulation. There are many common facts all round 
of this kind, which are startling enough, when attention 
is drawn to their real significance. 

The boys of a class were once not a little discom- 
fited, and amused, by som.ething like the following dia- 
logue. 

Af aster. Did you ever hear of Fortunatus's purse ? 

Boys (two or three). Oh yes, it ahvays had money 
in it. 

M. Would you like to have one ? 

B. I should just think so, rather. 

3f. Why don't you get one ? 

B. Oh, it's only a Fairy-story; don't I wish I could? 



yo Fo7^tiinatus s ptcrse. 

Al. What ! you don't mean to say you don't be- 
lieve it ? 

B. Of course not. Who beheves in Fairy-stories ? 

M. I do : really now don't you know where the 
purse hangs ? 

B. (quite puzzled). No. 

M. Fairy-purses hang on the Fairy-tree to be sure ; 
I have one. 

B. (incredulous). You don't say so ? 

M. But I do (pulling out a shilling); that came 
from it. 

B. (very much taken aback). Are you serious ? 

M. Quite serious. Where did this shilling come 
from? 

B. Oh, it's yours. 

M. No doubt. I did not steal it, I hope, but how 
did it become mine ? 

B, Oh, I suppose you were paid for keeping school. 

M. W^ell, why don't you keep school? You told 
m.e you would like some money. 

B. I can't. 

M. Why not ? 

B. I don't know enough. 

M. Oh ! but what has that to do with it ? 

B. Of course you must have knowledge to keep a 
school. 

M. Indeed ! ! Do you mean to tell me that my 
knowledge turned into money ? 

B. Yes. 

M. What ! ? This shilling part of a Greek verb ? 

B. (laughing). I suppose so. 



School fairy-laiid. 7 1 

M. What are you, pray, doing here ? 

B. Oh ! we come to learn. 

M. Not to get knowledge ? surely ? 

B. Of course we do though. 

M. You don't mean to say you are climbing the tree 
of knowledge ? 

B. (twinkling somewhat). Well ! I suppose so. 

M. To go back 3 where does the Fairy-tree grow ? 

B. (promptly). In Fairy-land, to be sure. 

M. You forget. I said I had climbed it. 

B. (dubiously). No I don't. Is it the tree of 
knowledge ? 

M. Where did my shilling come from ? 

B. From the knowledge you have. 

AI. But where does the Fairy-purse hang ? 

B. You told me on the Fairy-tree. 

M. But the shilling came from the Fairy-purse. 

B. 0-o-h-h ! ! 

M. And yoii agreed that the Fairy-purse hangs on 
the Fairy-tree. Now, what is the Fairy-tree ? 

B. It is the tree of knowledge. 

M. And you told me that the Fairy-tree of coiifse 
grew — in ? 

B. Oo-h-h-h! Fairy-land. 

M. And Fairy-land is ? 

B. (many broad grins). School. 

No Pantomime ever made a more unexpected trans- 
formation scene than this, when the whole class with 
a dehghted chuckle perceived that they had been trapped 
into calHng school, Fairy-Land. For a time at all events 
they did not envy the chimney-sweep. 



72 Real vahie, mm^ket value . 

No doubt this is but a small part, and a mean part 
of the subject : nevertheless it is a part, and a necessary 
part, and like all beginnings worth notice, and important 
to beginners. Great confusion appears to exist on the 
simple point of the value of knowledge, and mental skill. 
To judge by the opinions generally expressed our friend 
Will o'the Wisp is lord paramount here also, and it is 
a mere matter of fancy, or chance, or guess work, or 
individual circumstances, what the value of mental train- 
ing is. It is quite fleeting, and misty, and immeasurable. 
and incalculable. Whereas nothing is more definite ; 
nothing more easy to calculate on principle. 

It is assumed that the work is being done in the 
right way. Pump-work is out of the question, even if it 
fills the kettle. The true value of all true skill is the 
subject now to be dealt with. The value of all mind 
work, all work, that is, which requires teaching, divides 
at once, and falls under two heads : real value ; that is, 
the value of the acquisition to the man himself in him- 
self : and market value ; which requires that the acqui- 
sition, whether really valuable or not, shall be capable of 
being bought and sold, and- can find purchasers in suffi- 
cient numbers. First let it be observed that the number 
of purchasers is quite distinct from the price at which 
a given article can be produced so as to yield a profit on 
its production, and may be dismissed from this investiga- 
tion; since it may be assumed that the worker either 
expects to find purchasers for his work ; or, if not, has 
some other object than a saleable article in view. The 
actual value of the marketable article, if it is to be sold 
at a profit, is the question now under consideration ; and 



The labottrers value. "j^ 

the variation of price produced by the supply exceeding 
or falling short of the demand does not affect the argu- 
ment ; whilst it tends to create great confusion by intro- 
ducing a disturbing element of no importance in the first 
instance. Now the market value of anything and every- 
thing which finds purchasers is made up of three factors, 
the time employed in the producing it, the strength 
needed in the production, and the risk of failure. The 
value then, or, in common words, the price at which an 
article can be brought into the market, is made up of 
time, strength, and risk. And a man's value is the 
money interest he can get in the market of the world 
for these three. By time is meant the number of un- 
remunerative years which must be spent in learning the 
skill necessary; by strength, the amount of physical 
force, or brain-power, or capital, or connexion, or plant, 
whether material plant, or trade facilities and means of 
working already gained; and by risk, the uncertainty 
whether the individual after all his labour and expendi- 
ture will succeed; the chance that all may be thrown 
away, which in many instances cannot be gauged before- 
hand. All these require to be taken into account in 
determining value. For example. The farm labourer 
can begin his work at once. No outlay of unprofitable 
time is required; his profit begins with his work. No 
outlay of unusual strength is required ; physical strength 
alone of an average kind is all that is wanted. He runs 
no risk of failure, as every one can do the work. He 
earns money as a child, and begins to maintain himself 
from the first moment that he begins to work" at all 
These facts decide that a labourer's wages will be low. 



74 The artizans vahte. 

No time is lost in being taught. No special strength is 
needed. There is no risk of failure. No interest there- 
fore has to be paid under any of these heads. Accord- 
ingly, though the work itself is the most necessary in the 
world, in fact the work by which man lives, the payment 
for the work is low. This is no arbitrary valuation but 
a law of nature. 

But an artizan, a carpenter, let us say, has to acquire 
skill. He cannot begin earning something at once. He 
must spend some years before he gets a penny; during 
all those years he must live, and pay moreover for being 
taught; and when he does begin on his own account, he 
has, first, to spend some money in material, and tools, 
and a working-place; and secondly, to sell his goods, 
and run the risk of not finding a sale. Interest must be 
paid on all this, or the work is not worth doing. Skilled 
work contains these factors of time, strength, and risk, 
the moment it begins to be skilled work. The artizan's 
work therefore is paid at a much higher rate than the 
labourer's. His wages represent the interest on the time, 
and brain, he has employed, and they rise in proportion 
to the amount of these. This is no arbitrary valuation, 
but a lav\r of nature. Moreover when the additional ele- 
ment of plant, material plant, or other large outlay of 
capital, involving great and accurate brain power, and 
much risk, comes in also, then great profits are made, as 
they deserve to be, by successful men. The most acute 
underling may turn out a miserable manager. Nothing 
but trial can show who has the stedfast will that can 
judge and decide, as well as the sharp eye that can see; 
nothing but trial can show who will, or will not, succeed 



The barrister s vahte, 75 

under the weight of responsibility, and the wear and tear 
of being the anxious centre to which all the evil and 
difficulty comes, and the need of being in character, dis- 
position, and firmness, able to make inferiors do well. 
It is a law of nature therefore that such strength should 
be paid high. 

To proceed another step. A barrister has to spend 
thirty years perhaps before he earns anything. During 
all that time his outlay on education and living has been 
great. He has to face in many instances the risk of not 
getting work; and in all instances the risk of not being 
able to do it successfully. For the skill required is of a 
high order, and cannot be tested with any certainty be- 
forehand; and the chance of failure is proportionate. A 
barrister therefore^ if successful, requires interest on all 
this expenditure of time, and strength of brain, and risk, 
and gets it. It is a law of nature that he should do so. 

The case of a curate, or of any man who is forced to 
spend twenty-two and twenty-three years or more in pre- 
paration before he can earn a penny, is analogous. It is 
true in many instances, the interest is not paid; and they 
do not receive the value of their work, though it is really 
worth it. Every nation is heavily in debt to its highest 
workers. For the highest work both in the religious and 
intellectual world will always be somewhat beyond the 
range of the intelligence of the majority, and accordingly 
will be illpaid. K nation's rank in the world may always 
be estimated as high, or low, by the amount it allows it- 
self to be in debt to the higher kinds of work. The fact 
however that the buyers do not know their own -interest 
in no way affects the true value of the work offered. 



76 Ale an demand mean supply. 

That is determined infallibly by the price of preparation; 
and that is fixed by time, strength, and risk. The actual 
money value of the highest education in the market will 
always be great; inasmuch as powerful minds, able to 
turn their powers to anything they are required to do, 
must always be in demand. What they turn their mind 
to will however depend very much on the demand. A 
mean demand is met by a mean supply. Able men as a 
class will go where their abilities are recognised and re- 
warded. The exceptional case of the religious service is 
not forgotten. But even there the natural law works 
incessantly, and a nation alive to the moral welfare of its 
citizens will appreciate and pay for the work done, in 
proportion to its capacity to understand it. This holds 
good in schools also. If the nation wants able men to 
deal with their children, it must pay for ability. If it 
thinks that because children are young, they are low- 
priced, rating their value as a calf, or a sheep, by their 
age, then the parents will be satisfied with low-priced 
workmen, and the supply will equal the demand. A 
shibboleth which to many minds confers plenary absolu- 
tion, whatever the consequences may be of a wrong de- 
mand. Men may demand what they please, but it is a 
law of nature that the highest education must always be 
high priced; whether the price is paid or not. If the 
price is not paid the power goes elsewhere, or is starved 
out. In either case the nation is the loser. 

There is however another aspect of the money ques- 
tion most worthy the attention of the teacher and taught, 
which concerns the early stages of life. 

Money is but stored-up labour, portable work, as 



Beggars rich or poor, "jj 

truly representing labour as a sack of corn does. And 
labour is the product of life, life converted into a durable 
form, capable of being stored, exchanged, transferred, 
but nevertheless everywhere and always nothing but life 
in spite of the change of shape. Many have to spend 
twenty, twenty-five, thirty years of their own lives before 
they earn a penny for their own support. During all 
this long period they must live, and they must pay both 
for living, and for the instruction in skilled work which 
they are receiving. Where does all this stored-up labour 
and life come from, which is thus lavished on them, and 
their education? It is other men's labour, other men's 
life, the sweat of their brows, and the blood of their hearts, 
which gives the young the opportunity of thus living and 
learning. How many hours of labour, and mental pain, 
and care, and weariness are embodied in those unfeeling 
coins that maintain the schoolboy in his place of vantage? 
It is all given in trust. There is an implied contract 
that work shall be done for it. Work can only be repaid 
by work. And no beggar who creeps through the street 
living on alms, and wasting them, is baser than those, 
who idly squander at school, or afterwards, these lives 
received on trust, the piled-up life of others, which they 
have spent or are spending as they live. It is a mean 
thing to live on alms, and do nothing; be the alms a 
princely fortune inherited, or a beggar's crust; both are 
equally the stored-up life of other men. And no man 
has a right to take the stored-up life of others, and pour 
it out in folly and idleness, at any time or in any place. 
If this truth was well known to the schoolboy, and part 
of his stock in trade before he came to school, many a 



yS In the name of the prophet, ''figs^ 

good, but thoughtless boy would alter his way of going 
on, and raise the whole work to a much higher level of 
efficiency by a better appreciation of it. 

Money value from this point of view plays an im- 
portant part in education, and no one is too young to 
have this truth laid down as a foundation to stand on. 

To resume. The market price of the educated man 
is a necessary factor in education. Only those who have 
exceptional advantages of stored-up life at their disposal 
to support them over a term of unpaid years can afford 
the time, or face the risk, involved in acquiring the skill 
necessary for even the higher forms of bread-winning. 
And interest must obviously be paid on this outlay if the 
public are to reap any advantage from it. Most as- 
suredly the despotism of a mob will no more get work 
done for nothing, than the despotism of a despot. 
Valuable work must be paid for, or it will not be done. 
But it must not be forgotten in dealing with the market 
price of education, that this by no means represents its 
real value. Power in a m.an's self has been proved to be 
the true object to strive after. And many of the lower 
forms of bread-winning do not touch this at all, although 
the possession of inward power touches them. However 
necessary the consideration of market value may be, and 
up to a certain point it is necessary, if this were all there 
could be some excuse for the idle and the ignorant. If 
education is nothing more than producing the most sale- 
able article in the human market, and reahsing the 
greatest profits, then the boy slave, who is being Vv^orked 
up for sale, may fairly have his own idea as to whether 
the result to be attained is v/orth the price he is paying 



I 



The auctioneer s havdmcr. 79 

for it. The grand doctrine of " every man for sale, in 
the name of the prophet, /p-i-," will at all times fall rather 
flat on youthful ears. Is he to sit and toil day by day, 
and let the sun shine upon hill and dale, and he not see 
it ? and let it gleam along the rivers, and glance in and 
out of the forest trees with scattered joyousness, and he 
not see it ? Is he to miss the freshness of the air, the 
games, and the thousand and one delights that pass 
ghttering through the kaleidoscope of the boy mind, 
so fertile in fancy, so free ? And all for what ? On the 
chance, forsooth, that by and by, if he is lucky, he may 
fetch a high price in the world's auction room. Is he to 
strain, and strive, and use time, and energy, and brain, 
and starve his ravening for free enjoyment and activity 
and fun, only to put himself up to the highest bidder, 
and value his life by what other people think of it, and 
not by what it is worth to himself? This will not do. 
A thousand reasons, and tens of thousands of excuses, 
any one of them convincing to a mind so ready to be 
convinced, bid him ansvv^er boldly "no:" and "no" 
he does answer in practice, a final, invincible ''no." 
Education, if it is to be a prevaiHng power, must be 
something which the auctioneer's hammer cannot fix the 
value of, something, that the highest bidder cannot buy, 
a gain in the man himself. The auctioneer's viev/ will 
never command the hearts and lives of the young. " In 
the name of the prophet — figs — " is not a war-cry to stir 
the idle pulse, or give the coward nerve, even though the 
price be great, and the figs, the sweetness of Paradise. 
They are far off, very far off, to the boy, and the cry is 
as a voice in a dream, distant and dim. The present is 



So Pot-hunting. 

tempting, all cannot win, and high wages are not life. 
"Figs" have little charm for the eager foot standing on 
life's bright threshold with an untried world in front. 
A better spell must be found to conjure with than this. 
There is another spell, which many conjure with, and its 
power over some cannot be denied. It is a louder and 
fiercer cry, but not more true j though true, high feelings 
are often marshalled under it ; and there is a noble side 
of human nature of which this parody of truth takes 
advantage, and reaps the benefit. The appeal to success, 
Prizes, and Prizewinning, bids fair to be the watchword 
of the day. But what does this do for the majority, for 
the non-competing crowd; who nevertheless do not 
politely die off, and make room; and cannot through 
modern squeamishness, be killed off, and buried ? There 
they are, and there they insist on remaining. The cha- 
racter of the appeal is noteworthy. About the year 
400 A.D. the Goth, and the Vandal, the Viking, and the 
whole North, Danes, and Saxons, and Jutes, began to 
pour in on the civilized Roman world, and brought theii 
battle-axes against all the civilization of the old order 
Physical force was let loose, and smashed everything, 
and a thousand years were used up before the finer and 
nobler life of the earlier times had reasserted its pre- 
eminence, conquered the conquerors, and given birth to 
Modern Europe. We are accustomed to call this period 
the Dark Ages. The name is deserved as far as the 
triumphs of the strong arm and the battle-axe were real 
and prevailing. Modern Europe scorns the Dark Ages. 
But is the axe the only weapon? or physical force the 
only force? In what respect morally does the strong 



The swi7ieherd's horn. 8i 

arm differ from the strong head ? Both are mere Instru- 
ments of a power behind both that uses them. And 
what is a nation doing which cahnly stands up and says, 
" We will only regard in our schools the breeding of the 
strong head ; and we will give all our honour and power 
to the wielders of strength"? "Glory to the strong. 
Boys, whet your tusks, rush, rend, tear, win, make your- 
selves a name, be great." This is but the Vandal over 
again, and a swineherd's call. The worship of force, 
no doubt, is an idolatry of a more stirring kind than the 
greed for market price, but only the more deadly on this 
account. Glory to the strong on the reverse side of the 
slileld is oppression to the weak. The weak are pushed 
into a corner, and neglected; their natural tendency to 
shrink from labour is educated into despair, by their 
being constantly reminded, directly or indirectly, that 
their labour is no good. All cannot stand in a conspicu- 
ous pillory of success. A base preeminence of brutal 
strength, however full the trough may be of coronets, 
or pride of place, belongs to but few ; and few compara- 
tively in early years are fired by the thought. Alas for 
the many, alas for the pith, and working fibre of the 
nation; alas for all the gentler_, and finer qualities by 
which society lives. The rain, and the dew, and the 
sunlight, and the crops, and grass that covers the hills 
with minute blades of life-sustaining power innumerable, 
must be banished from the world; the volcano carries 
the day. All tender influences, all prevailing, patient, 
unpretending good may pack and be gone. There is no 
room for them in the heart of the modern coming world. 
Blind Samson is to be king; and Hercules Furens next 
T. 6 



82 The Darker Age. 

heir to the throne. The pride of intellect is to be un- 
chained ; and with the break-up of humility, reverence, 
holiness, and genius the child of love, the Darker Age 
will set in, to be wondered at in turn in years to come. 
There is to be no room for the weak. So a conviction 
is gradually forced on the practical worker that it is use- 
less for the many to strive for individual skill, and they 
accordingly accept their doom. Utter deadness to the 
true power of Education is the natural result of this; 
and produces an impossibility under the present circum- 
stances of its being got. Yet it is an axiom that a 
system, which takes no count of the weak, is no part of 
God's true world. "Gather up the fragments thai re- 
main that nothing be lost," is the watchword of Truth 
for ever. Now on all sides there is but the dull fierce- 
ness of mechanic greed and the auctioneer's hammer, 
or the neglected idler's snores, only broken by the hoarse 
clamour round the trough, and the loud droning of the 
swineherd's horn. 



CHAPTER VI. 

■ THE THEORY OF TEACHING. 

Real Value. Growing eyes. 

The market value of all skilled work has been briefly 
dealt with ; and the plain principles on which it can be 
calculated pointed out. It has been proved that mental 
skill is costly, and that the skilled workman must be paid 
a high price for his skill if the nation is to benefit by it. 
At the same time it has been assumed, and with truth, 
that mankind in general will not busy themselves in 
acquiring skill which is not likely to bring any return; 
or in other words, that a reasonable hope of a market 
will always be an important factor in determining the 
work of the majority. Nevertheless the auctioneer's 
hammer, and the swineherd's horn, have been shown to 
reach but little way, to be very inadequate as motives 
even where they reach, to be destructive of the welfare of 
many, and not to touch the main subject at all. Some- 
thing is needed which the lowest can get and feel the 

6—2 



84 Plato s testimony. 

gain of, and the highest can never reach beyond ; some- 
thing for alh If this is a true statement the heaping up 
of knowledge cannot satisfy this demand, and may stand 
veiy much in the way of it. Plato has given a standard 
to refer to, which may serve by an entirely independent 
experience to introduce in a striking manner another side 
of the question. He is engaged in arguing for the im- 
mortality of the soul, and bringing proof that human hfe 
is not bounded by the narrow limits of birth and death. 
In the course of his argument he makes the following 
remarkable statement. "The immortality of the soul," 
he said, " appeared to him to receive decisive proof from 
the rapidity with which boys learnt. For they seized on 
knowledge so readily that they seemed to have come 
from a previous life, and to be picking up again what 
they knew before, and not learning something new." 

What a marvellous testimony this is to the belief of 
the learners that the education was worth having, and 
could be got. What a vivid picture it gives of eager 
listeners with keen, wistful faces hanging on the lips of 
teachers ; and of teachers, who knew their work, and did 
it. They at all events believed in education for its own 
sake. They felt it to be their own lives they were deaHng 
with. There was no deluge on the shut kettle going on 
in that strange Athenian land. No crowds of unwilling 
cattle driven into the school corral in the foolish early 
days, which we have improved on so much. There is 
Plato's statement; a clear, unmistakeable, sober fact, 
though standing out sharp, and bright as the outline of 
his own Hymettus under the southern sky. How it 
sparkles with life and light. How rich in promise of 



The stone of Sisyphtts. 85 

freshness, and happy range, and fruitful tracts of joyous 
mind, joyous in the freedom of its growth, joyous in the 
breathing healthy bracing air, blowing from regions 
bountiful and good. What will the English schoolmaster 
say on the subject? Answer class-rooms from end to 
end of this land. Answer everyone, whose work lies 
within the four walls of any room, where the elite of 
England are under instruction; and the answer shall be — 
the answer of Sisyphus — of a heavy weight toilsomely 
forced up hill, and ever coming back again to crush the 
forcer. There is no upward spring. There is no life 
stirring for the sake of life. This will be the answer 
wherever any attempt is made to train each boy. This 
will be the answer even in speaking of the few, who are 
eager, the prize-winners. They race for the prize; but 
they, even they, as a body, do not work from love of the 
work for its own living sake, and lose half their time 
from this half-heartedness : even they never enter into 
the higher realm of thought in many instances. They 
are satisfied with the swineherd's trough, or the not 
ignoble duty to their homes. This is no hasty assertion, 
but the result of many years' experience of all kinds; 
made with the full knowledge of the ease with w^hich 
unpleasant words are misunderstood, or misrepresented, 
or mutilated, and set up to be demohshed by adverse 
skill. Any master of words can at any time make the 
worse appear the better cause before a mixed audience ; 
how much more when the unpleasant words are spoken 
in the face of the strong motives there are to induce 
many to contradict them. In spite of all this the judg- 
ment is fearlessly put forth as incapable of being contra- 



86 G^^eek sunshine^ London fog. 

dieted, if rightly understood, that the mass of English 
minds are dead to education, and will none of it ] and 
that the mental atmosphere in which Plato lived and 
taught, and the atmosphere in which an Englishman 
lives and teaches, are to one another as the clear Greek 
sunshine to the densest London fog. 

Let the parents of England see to it. It is their 
concern. If they believe that an eager desire to practise 
mental athletics, and to be trained in the indoor work of 
schools, animates their children, not a word more need 
be said. But if they have their misgivings on this head, 
then it is worth considering, why what ought to be 
increase of power, and a constant source of new interest, 
should be so distasteful ; why in fact the schoolboy, who 
would not give up his power of reading, and writing, 
which he has learned to value, nevertheless will not 
budge another inch, and very often does not budge any 
appreciable distance, during the fourteen or fifteen years 
he is theoretically being taught; though he learnt one 
language as a baby, and was made to read and write 
afterwards without much more expenditure of labour. 
Surely he would move if he saw, or felt, anything worth 
moving for. What are the resources of the bird boy in 
the field ? According to the legend, sv/inging on a gate, 
and eating fat bacon, this sums up supreme felicity in 
his case. But the most stolid schoolboy in his dreariest 
hour pitches his ambition higher than a gate and fat 
bacon. 

There must be something radically A^Tong in the 
process which has turned Plato's young Athenian into the 
EngUsh schoolboy. The other side of the question may 



New members, ears, eyes, ^J. 

be briefly summed up in one short sentence ; Plato was 
dealing with the minds of his audience; schools deal now 
with the books they use. Drawing out the powers of 
living minds is indeed different from packing in dead 
facts, even when the packing is neatly done. It is time 
to begin to treat of training as distinct from packing. 

A short view of some of the simpler results of train- 
ing may serve to lead up to the discussion of the main 
subject, and show the real value of all true education. 
It has already been pointed out that thought requires 
material, and that material is gathered by observation, 
and that observation is trained work. But the way in 
which observation and training act, and their wondrous 
magic, hke many every-day, habitual possessions, passes 
without notice. Few are aware of the stupendous fact 
that skilful training as much produces new growth, and 
new kinds of growth, in man's mental organism, as a 
gardener produces new growths, and new varieties of 
plants, in his garden. New additions can be made to 
a man, quite as real additions as if new members, or 
senses were given, the seven leagued boots of the story 
books, the invisible cap, or the ears that hear the grass 
grow. Story books often hold truths in striking masque- 
rade. The familiar instance of the sportsman shall serve 
as the first example. He and his town friend take a 
walk together through the fields, chatting as they go, to 
all appearance furnished with the same number of ears, 
eyes, legs, &c. : suddenly the sportsman breaks off with 
the exclamation, " look, there's a hare sitting." His two- 
eyed friend stares about, and asks, where ? He is told. 
He cannot see it. He is told again, and again, and 



SS The Sportsman s eye. 

again, and still he cannot see it. The exact spot is 
pointed out, still he cannot see it. And if the assertion 
formed part of a discussion on an intellectual question 
not capable of being verified by the senses, he neither 
would see it, nor could be made to see it ; but would 
remain blind, and unconvinced to the end. However, 
they advance ; and when they get closer, up starts the 
hare, and proves the truth of the sportsman's words. 
But the remarkable fact of all is, that this unintentional 
sceptic did physically see the hare the whole time he 
was stoutly affirming he did not. Exactly the same 
image of the field, and the hare in it, was pictured on 
the retina of both the speakers, the eye in both cases 
dealt with the same imprint ; yet such is the natural 
magic in the midst of which we move, that, in spite of 
this certainty, the one seer sees, and the other does not 
see, and might stand there in the field to the end of 
time, and still declare, and declare truly, that he did not 
see the hare. The difference between training and non- 
training is so great that the actual fact of physical sight 
ceases to be sight to the untrained eye ; or rather that 
a new faculty of sight is given to the trained eye, and 
the man endowed with something in himself, from hence- 
forth inseparable from him. Daily experience testifies 
daily to the unexpected powers that exist in man, but 
must be called out by training before they are known to 
exist. Until the training comes, the eye can be so un- 
conscious, so stupid^ as actually not to see what it actually 
does see, as far as the physical fact of sight goes. And 
sight, which has passed into a proverb for certainty, is 
shown every moment to be non-existent till trained. 



The Painter s eye, 89 

The same strange exposure of the delusion that sight 
is sight, and the same strange discovery of new powers, 
will happen in a higher degree if the sportsman goes into 
the field with a painter. But this time the sportsman is the 
victim. To him the field beneath the rich canopy of the 
autumnal sky, and heavy clouds, with the great Septem- 
ber sun, is grey, or yellow, as he may call it. And grey 
or yellow would be liberally, and unhesitatingly laid on 
the canvas, if a brush was put in his hands, and a pre- 
ternatural skill in wielding it for the nonce given him. 
Then, and not till then, would he discover, with the fatal 
evidence before his eyes, self-convicted, how utterly false 
his idea of what he saw had been. Possibly after that 
he might be open to receive an account of what had 
really been imprinted on his eye. And he might be in- 
duced to believe that the colours on the varied surface of 
the ,stubble, under the changeful sky, ranged in subtle 
gradations, from deep black in the cloud-swept hollows, 
and heavy shade of trees, up through every tint of shift- 
ing harmonies, that earth, sun-light, straw, gloom of tree, 
or hedge, or passing cloud could supply, till they melted 
away in purest white where the slant rays just touched 
the upland with a rim of light. But this is what the 
painter sees, and the other does not see. Yet the image 
on the retina of both is the same. All this is capable of 
demonstrative proof. If it were not so, how much humi- 
lity, how much faith it would require in the non-seer to 
believe that he could thus acquire new sight with the 
same eyes. This difficulty is increased exceedingly when 
the next step in the series is taken, and mental pictures 
come under consideration. These are not capable of 



90 The Poet's eye. 

being proved by demonstration, the hare cannot be 
started, the colour cannot be laid on. Yet if a poet goes 
into the same field, what manifold marvels his mental 
vision may behold. Bear witness all happy songs of 
field, and forest, and stream, and hill, that have been, or 
shall be, sung on earth. Bear witness butterfly, and 
flower, bird, bee, and every living thing that gladdens 
earth with life that moves, in all earth's changing moods, 
and which now make melody for evermore in human 
hearts dwelling in lasting summer of the poet's verse. 
Yet in all cases the image on the retina is the same. 
The ploughboy sees the same field; the sportsman sees 
the same field; the painter sees the same field; the poet 
sees the same field; the actual eyes of all are the same. 
Compare the ploughboy's world, a prison without Hght, 
with the poet's world. Compare the prison of the walls 
of flesh with the dark soul within closed round with 
gloom, cribbed, cabined, and confined, in its unwin- 
dowed body, with nothing but a lump of bacon in the 
midst of the gloom, as its highest thought and joy; com- 
pare this and the poet's inheritance and empire over 
worlds on worlds. Nay compare it with the feeblest 
glimmer of the dawn of light in the heart of the unwilHng 
schoolboy; would not the most stolid schoolboy clamour 
after light? For he would feel a sense of power and 
pleasure in himself, a new self beginning to live, and 
would not let go the feeling, and the gain. But this truth 
holds good through every gradation of progress, whenever 
each learner with certainty grows new powers through 
true guidance and teaching, however slowly it may be. 
Give the certainty, and there will be no more living 



The microscope mental lenses. 91 

prisons with bacon, or cricket, in the darkness, as the 
sole relief, flickering like a farthing rushlight, soon to go 
out in stench. Man moves in an everlasting mystery of 
unknown life, from which a new truth may flash at any 
moment, and education trains the loving eye into a work- 
ing power able to see truth. Even as the microscope 
has revealed new worlds, so have the mental lenses of 
the great poets and thinkers done. Beauty beyond all 
expression in the meanest created things can be seen by 
the ordinary eye of even ignorant man by looking through 
a microscope; and unknown infinities of smallness and 
perfection, which baffle, even when seen, the powers of 
the mind to grasp, have become visible to common sight. 
In like manner literature, and true training, creates sight. 
And the world of common men, generation by generation, 
may look through the magic glasses of the mind, and 
gradually become conscious of the same infinity of unsus- 
pected glory in the midst of which we go about our daily 
tasks, and move; always in it, never aware of its presence, 
till some trained eye descries it, and makes it its own, 
and gives it as a gift to ignorant men ; or we ourselves in 
some happy hour fight on some fair discovery of hidden 
thought. Not a leaf waves in the wind; not a drop of 
dew comes sparkfing out of nothing to gem the bladed 
grass with orbs of light, without telling something to 
those fitted to receive it. Thought touches thought with 
quickening spirit and life enriches life with wealth, until 
ever mounting upwards the mind becomes a kind of new 
created king, a lord of thought, lord of an endless king- 
dom full of light and pleasure and power. Give a cer- 
tainty of advance, and there will be no more hanging 



92 The prison walls open, 

back. It is possible to conceive a time when the poorest 
cottage between the four seas shall be a home of life in 
its truest and best sense; and its inhabitants move with 
firm step in the great freehold of cultivated mind. The 
atmosphere of cultivated mind might pervade society to 
such a degree that the common conversation of mankind 
with each other should be full of pleasant novelties of 
knowledge, and much be gained by mere social inter- 
course, with but few books. Mind is more powerful, 
when it is the mind bred and fostered by generations of 
intelligent work, than the world in any way believes. 
Now and then the half imprisoned semi-ploughboy com- 
monalty are astonished at hearing of botanists like Dick*, 
and naturahsts like Edwards t, bringing the trained eye 
and loving heart of life that can see, into lowly rooms, 
and from under humble roof-trees sending out a message 
of interest to all. But even if original searchers will al- 
ways be rare both amongst high and low, those who can 
enjoy what others see and show them need not be rare. 
When time, and teaching, and love have been at work, 
the prison walls open, and the lord of thought comes out 
to take possession, the man whose power is in himself 
finds himself endowed, as he daily grows in power, with 
new members, new senses, matchless instruments, and 
begins to range freely through a glorious universe — a 
voyager on a boundless sea of discovery, gathering fresh 
glory and fresh delight as he ranges. Nevertheless all 
this transmuting power is nothing but observation, loving 
observation pursuing its work with skill, and working 

* Life of a Scotch Geologist and Botanist, Robert Dick. 

t Life of a Scotch Naturalist, Tho. Edwards, by Samuel Smiles, 



{ 



Stupidity no 'inore. 93 

with sleepless strength, because of skill and love. Time, 
and teaching, and love, these three, can slowly and surely 
make the eye see, and the mind inspire the eye, and be 
inspired in turn. The slowest can begin though the 
s\\dftest cannot end. Time, teaching, and love, these 
three, transmute all things when life is at w^ork. There 
is no incapacity which can prevent observation. And 
there is no inability to enjoy what observers give. The 
great writings of all time rightly treated are but lenses 
which all can look through. The problem of power in a 
man's self is capable of no hard solution. There is no 
stupidity. Once impress on the minds of a generation 
that teaching and training are names of life, and pleasure, 
names of new senses, new strength, new delights, which 
all can attain, and Plato's schoolboy will appear again. 
There will be no stupidity. 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE THEORY OF TEACHING. 

Observafmt. Mental Law. Accuracy. 

Observation, or, in other words, intelligent work has 
been shown to be the be all and the end all of teaching 
and training. This fact does away with stupidity. The 
importance of bringing the subject into well-defined limits, 
and proving it to be within everybody's reach, cannot be 
overrated. One great consequence at once results from 
this. Given proper conditions, a teacher is bound to 
succeed ; with its corollary, that, given proper teaching, 
ignorance is not a misfortune, but a crime. Nevertheless 
a man cannot till a field by walking up and down it 
scattering corn. In bringing land under cultivation much 
has to be done before the sowing begins. This is self- 
evident. The ground has to be considered, and the 
state it is in, and how far it needs to be prepared for 
receiving the seed. In like manner in cultivating mind 
it is no less self-evident that mind itself must be dealt 
with. And a glimpse has already been given in the shut 
kettles and the pumping, of how many things may have 
to be done before the mind can receive anything. Often 



Observation and Accuracy. 95 

and often the inspiring a belief in value and in the possi- 
bility of getting the object is the necessary preliminary, 
without which all other application of skill is wasted 
labour. But a great step is gained when the simple 
proposition that mind has to be dealt with is accepted. 
The question is at once brought out of the clouds. The 
teacher's subject is mindj therefore to mind he must 
first address himself, whatever else he may afterwards 
betake himself to. The whole matter rests on the best 
method of awakening, and exercising dormant faculties, 
of directing, and training them, of giving them material 
to work on, and finally, of so increasing their vigour, and 
quickening them into higher life as to amount to nothing 
less than a giving practically of new senses, and creating 
as it were a new creature. Now mind is an active, living 
power, and its energy and working manifestation is thought 
Thought then is the teacher's care, and the production of 
thought his intention. But as mind is a living power, 
with all the changeful properties of fife, not only the 
production of thought, but the training and shaping it in 
such a way as to become skilful, self-restrained, and 
consciously harmonious, is a teacher's province. The 
work of a teacher then is twofold, producing thought, 
and training it. Two familiar words, allowed a fair 
latitude, will condense all that a teacher has to do. 
Observation and accuracy, define the whole range. Under 
the head of observation falls all imparting of new powers, 
and drawing out the old. And under the head of accuracy 
falls all skill in arrangement, and all perception and 
practice of due proportions, by which varied material is 
put in place, and brought into harmonious use. Let it 



96 King Topsy-Ttirvy. 

be noted in passing that memory has no more to do with 
true power than the cart which carries the seed-corn to 
the field has to do with the growth of the crops. 

It has been shown that thought cannot exist without 
material to call it forth and exercise it. The material 
again is twofold ; if the same term can rightly be applied 
to two very different kinds of things. First, there is the 
material already in the mind unknown, the latent facts, 
like the hare on the retina of the townsman's eye, where 
all that is needed is to bring out an existing power. Under 
this head is grouped all material already gathered un- 
consciously, as material known to be there, but not 
heeded as being common, language for instance, the 
ordinary every-day sights and conditions of the visible 
world ; all this is ready to hand, and ought to be utihzed, 
and lighted up, so far at least as to awaken a sense of 
an unknown world existing in common things. Secondly, 
there is the work of acquiring fresh knowledge, and 
exciting observation by a new and previously unknown 
class of facts. . Of these two the material ready at hand, 
familiar, and unimpeded by the necessity of mastering, 
or, alasj not mastering strange symbols, claims attention 
first, and most. In the first place, there it is. A fact, 
the importance of which can scarcely be exaggerated. 
Certainly those who have watched the vast capacity in 
the boy mind for not having things there, and the curious 
menagerie in which King Topsy-Turvy reigns supreme 
over what is supposed to be there, ^vill not be inclined to 
undervalue what really is there. The learner's native 
language ought to be the groundv/ork of all teaching. By 
this is meant the actual language, a skilful examination of 



Thought lessons in cricket. 97 

the common sentence as a vehicle of intelligent thought, 
with its structure and necessary requirements ; not what 
is often called teaching English, not the philology, or 
history, or literature, or curiosities and idioms, but the 
very common talk we talk, and why, and how, we talk, if 
we talk correctly, or what foUies we commit, if we talk 
incorrectly. Many pretend that this logical fashioning of 
grammar is beneath their notice ; and fly to one or other 
of the above-mentioned substitutes, which are very 
pleasant but if considered to be a training in the English 
language are delusions. If the real language work is 
taken the ground is familiar enough, but there are plenty 
of hares in it to surprise the untrained mind. On the 
same principle from time to time a lesson in question and 
answer on some familiar thing should be given. For 
example, let a teacher give his class a spirited cross- 
examination on cricket, and why cricket is a favourite 
game, with the intention of baffling them by Socratic 
logic, driving them into corners, exposing their ludicrous 
beliefs, forcing them to arrange their ideas, and disentangle 
their confused statements. Let him make them clear 
out why they like it, and discover how much of pain, and 
difficulty, and disagreeable, there is in what seemed to 
them a m.atter of course; and then let him generalise, and 
push them back on those properties of human nature 
which, by being called into active exercise, make cricket 
interesting, as well as many other things besides cricket. 
All the secret thoughts excited, and the amusing over- 
throws in argument form no insignificant training, when 
the teacher brings out what trials the game puts its 
votaries to, what its real merits are, and at every turn 
T. 7 



98 Lessons in chairs. 

startles them by some new dilemmas. A hare jumps up 
at every step, no mean magic is shot into the every-day 
world ; and a sense of their ignorance being insecure, and 
not such perfect knowledge as they thought, because it 
was famihar, begins. Tell a class to define a chair, or a 
room, or an inkstand, or any common object, and in a 
skilful way refute and ridicule their vague, general terms, 
and expose the gaps and defects in their statements, and 
a new ray is dashed across their life, a flash, which how- 
ever momentary, has cloven the darkness. They have 
seen, and from henceforth sight cannot quite leave them 
again. Whilst those who care move with awakened 
curiosity in a sort of land, where at any moment, as in 
dreams, or story books, the log of wood may spring -up as 
an enchanted prince, or the toad turn round, and appear 
as the long-sought bride. A sense that nothing is only 
what it seems begins to be felt, and a suspicion that every- 
thing they see, or do, or touch, has a pleasant trick to 
play them finds entrance. 

The late Dean Dawes, of Hereford, drew attention to 
the value of calling out observation in common things in 
an original and striking way. Unhappily the clue he 
gave towards education in the National Schools has not 
been followed up. In fact, it was entirely broken off by 
a different demand on the part of the authorities. 

The mere fact of answering questions with thought is 
a great point gained. Pumped-on boys cannot answer 
questions. 

It is true the power of questioning on common things 
requires that the questioner shall be a skilled workman, 
a teacher; but in theory, on paper, it is allowable to 



Eyes and eyes, 99 

imagine such a being. It is true also that the power to 
question implies that a class be not too large to be ques- 
tioned j but in theory, on paper, it is allowable to imagine 
such a class. 

Common things have the priceless advantage of being 
common, of being there. And as soon as common things 
have this spark, this fuse, thrown in amongst them, there 
is no limit to the possible effect. All the world with 
its startling contrasts and secrets becomes one great 
lesson book. All the marvels that lie hid even in the 
dust of our feet may at any moment quicken into fairy 
births. At least the distinction is seen between the 
unthinking and the intelligent eye, between the familiarity 
that breeds contempt, because it is ignorant, and the 
familiarity that brings the worshipper on his knees because 
he has been brought near to greatness, and can see it, 
which tends to remove the reproach that clings to the 
mean man for ever of not being able to know the prophet. 
The prophet can be known if the mean man is made 
intelligent. The hero will be a hero to his valet, if the 
valet is given the eye to see heroes. This process of 
drawing attention to the unknown known, and exciting 
interest by awakening new power, is of universal applica- 
tion, and can be applied to new material to lighten the 
labour of gathering it in, as well as to the old. Two 
examples shall be given in illustration of this fact, which 
shall be taken from the least promising area of drudgery. 
Few are aware, when a little boy is groaning over his 
Latin with about the same feehng of relationship to it as 
to " Anthropophagi, and men whose heads do grow be- 
neath their shoulders" that from eighty to ninety per 

7—2 



lOO Magic transformations. 

cent, of the main words, which occur in a Latin author, 
are found in Enghsh also, and are ahvays skipping in and 
out over his own tongue ; and that instead of being a 
strange novelty, a kind of wild beast, the hateful appari- 
tion is only English in an old coat, a toga, and a tame 
domestic creature enough. But what a light this kind of 
fact may be made, at the same time that it not only takes 
the weight off, but also fastens the work on to things 
already known. Those known things moreover are 
discovered to have new properties and a fresh interest ; 
they open, as a door might open into a garden, and dis- 
close an interior view with flowery space, where before 
there was a blank wall. 

Another of the great schoolboy wild beasts disappears 
at a word in the same manner, the difficulty arising from 
the numerous changes in the endings of words. This 
will be dealt with further on. But one thing may be 
noted here, that all these variations are only badges which, 
like the address on a parcel, tell where each word ought 
to go. Many magic transformations of this kind exist, 
which teachers will readily find for themselves. The 
pleasurable surprise of disentangling the confused skein 
of boy ideas, and making them see how much they really 
know, and what they really think, and why, is a never- 
failing source of interest in good teaching. From all this 
it will be seen that the beginning of teaching consists in 
rousing some intelligent appreciation of what is already 
known by rote, or daily seen by eyes that see not, and 
daily done without understanding, and despised, because 
not understood. Attention ought to be drawn to the 
innumerable links between common familiar objects and 



Training and non-training. loi 

the new bits of learning, and the whole structure of mind- 
work made one organism in this way, and one life breathed 
into it all. 

This slight sketch of the first duty of a teacher to 
excite observation will serve as an outline for work, and 
indicate the direction of the path. Not least it will point 
out clearly that there is a path. If the distinctive 
character of training as opposed to non-training can also 
be found, and laid down with any precision, then the 
main roads into the great empire will have been marked 
out, and the wilderness character of the work got rid of 
both in imagination, and in fact. 

The distinctive character of Training can be found by 
seeing what characteristic is common to all examples of 
skilled work. To begin with physical skill. Put a rifle 
into the hand of the keenest eye, and steadiest strength, 
in the world (strength and keenness of sight shall be 
conceded for argument's sake), bid him fire at a mark, 
and he will miss ; though a very moderate rifleman shall 
hit it. The difl'erence lies in the power of the trained 
man, however inferior naturally, to send the bullet 
accurately to the mark he wishes to hit. Put an axe 
into the hand of the most active athlete, and bid him cut 
down a tree. His blows will fall with laughable eccen- 
tricity anywhere but in the right place, in spite of his 
activity and strength. But a very poor creature, who has 
been accustomed to handle an axe, will deUver every 
stroke to within a hair's breadth, and accomplish the 
work v/ith ease. The trained hand is accurate. Bid 
anyone who is not a botanist, describe a plant. The 
failure even of very educated minds is ludicrous. He 



I02 The beginning and the end. 

will say it is green, or prickly, or this, or that, terms 
equally applicable to a lizard, or a hedgehog, to say nothing 
of a legion of other plants. But a botanist will at once 
name a score of little typical facts of leaf, and tendril, 
and stem, and flower, which mark distinctly what the 
plant is, and separate it from any other plant. Training 
has first made him observe accurately, and then invent 
words to express accurately what he has observed. And 
so on, through all instances of skilled labour, the excel- 
lence common to all trained workers is accuracy. Accurate 
observation of little things marks the accurate observer. 
Accurate observation of very little things marks the very 
accurate observer. The very accurate observer becomes 
the master of many facts old and new : the master of 
many facts old and new, each in its place, has all that 
teaching can do to make him a great man. 

Training means accuracy. Observation and accuracy 
are twins. The beginning of all true work is accurate 
observation, the end and crown of all true work is an 
accuracy which observes everything, and lets nothing 
escape, a power of observation animated by a true love 
for what it undertakes to investigate, and able through 
love to discover subtler truth than other people. Obser- 
vation and accuracy comprise all that it is possible for a 
teacher to do, whatever maybe the subject with which he 
has to deal. And observation and accuracy ought first to 
be as the joy of the explorer to the curious child : who 
should be made to see in every word he speaks, and every 
common thing he sets eyes on endless surprises, and 
novelties at every turn of unexpected pleasure, and new 
delight. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE THEORY OF TEACHING. 

The Schoolboy's Briar-patchy Latin and Greek. 

An exercise ground is wanted for the drawing out, 
and practice of thought, observation, and accuracy. For 
though the whole world is their practice ground, and the 
better the surface facts of the world are known the better 
do they lend themselves to research and further know- 
ledge, yet it is necessary to have a fixed course for 
teaching, and necessary to utilise the experience of past 
generations. These two necessities are very important. 
A common subject, and an old subject is required. The 
theory of teaching indeed can employ any subject; but 
as teaching is a practical science it must be illustrated by 
practice. The choice of the illustration will depend on 
what is the highest subject of mental training accessible 
to all, and in commonest use; inasmuch as the highest 



I04 Wanted, a practising ground. 

subject of mental training in commonest use appeals to 
the experience of the greatest number, both in present 
and past time. There must be such a subject from the 
nature of things. And the Theory and Practice of teach- 
ing must take that subject as its illustration. There is no 
choice. Other subjects, however excellent, or important, 
have little or nothing to do with illustrating the general 
principles of teaching from lack of range, or lack of com- 
mon use. The study of language is such a subject. 
First of all the study of the student's own language. 
The fact that the English language is not the first train- 
ing of the Enghsh nation, and that no Englishman is 
taught a thorough mastery of how to speak, and put out 
thought in his own language, at once puts English 
education on a very low level. Next to the learner's 
native language comes the great fact that the literary 
education of the world, that is, the education of higher 
thought and its expression, has been based for two thou- 
sand years on the study of Greek and Latin. Nothing 
else covers so wide a space in time, or exercises mind to 
the same extent. Yet from various reasons the power of 
Greek and Latin as mental training is not understood; 
and as long as memory is chiefly employed never will be 
understood. As exercises of memory they are bad. The 
schoolboy especially does not understand what he is 
about. It is a perfect wilderness to him. But he ought 
to understand what he is about. The schoolboy's wilder- 
ness now claims our attention as no wilderness, but the 
home of culture. Many a schoolboy's idea of school 
and education is vague in the extreme as to the benefit, 
and vivid in the extreme as to the discomfort. They 



The Schoolboy's wilderness. 105 

find themselves thrown into a perfect thicket of new 
tormenting words in strange languages, every word brist- 
ling with Httle thorns, and every little thorn specially pro- 
vided for them, so it seems, in a prim artificial region 
from which it is the fondest wish of their hearts to escape 
as soon as possible, and join the ranks of their elders, 
who roam outside the tangled brambly plot in ilowery 
space, or at least, flowers or no flowers, unmolested by 
the peculiar boy-privilege of prickles. They get but 
little knowledge; most assuredly knowledge would come 
to them far more easily in their own language. What is 
it all worth? Is there any meaning in the briar-patch? 
These are very natural questions, and the beginner, who 
most probably has been told, if he has been told anything, 
to gain knowledge, has no chance of answering them with- 
out help, which he does not get. Nevertheless, if obser- 
vation and the observant eye are precious, and training 
gives them; if accuracy is the result of training; and 
training in observation and in accuracy is the true work 
of the teacher and learner, then there is meaning in the 
briar-patch. 

Two things are necessary in training mind. There 
must be something to call mind into play; and there 
must be teaching skill to enable the mind to profit by its 
exercise. That is to say, there must be a familiar sub- 
ject rich in intelligent difficulties; and there must be 
inteUigent skill to turn those difficulties to account. To 
give an example. Let Map-knowledge be put forward 
as a desirable subject to know. Everybody will at once 
admit that it is desirable. But let Map-knowledge be put 
forward as an efficient subject for training mind. First 



io6 Inventories do not train. 

of all the boy operated on has no Map-knowledge in him; 
Maps are not a part of his mind; and secondly, Map- 
knowledge is a mere inventory of facts, and like any 
other inventory can be made an effort of memory, and 
never require any exercise of mind whatever. This 
dropping in of dry knowledge instead of calling out and 
strengthening living power is no training of mind. No 
memory-work is true mind-work. A great demand on 
the memory convicts a subject of being low in educa- 
tional value. Let no one suppose that the teaching of 
geography as it can be taught is undervalued by what 
has been said. Map-knowledge and nothing more, is not 
the study of the wonders of earth, and sea, and climate, 
and all the marvels which may belong to geography. 
Contrast then the inventory work with thought, language, 
and literature, the difference is seen at once. The first 
is from outside dropped in. AVhat is dropped in can be 
dropped out again. The second is from inside strength- 
ened. Strength within remains. The demand is for an 
exercise ground for mind. If besides this, wonderful 
gains are the result so much the better; and it must be 
something common to all. Mankind require in the first 
instance something perfectly well known as material for 
thought, and yet full of unknown problems for the exer- 
cise of the mind. The imagination may run riot in para- 
doxes to describe what is wanted, and yet find all its 
paradoxes sober realities in the subject found. Some- 
thing is required which shall be perfectly easy, and at the 
same time perfectly hard; familiar to all, and known to 
none; of universal use, and universally strange to the 
users; so simple, that babies learn it with ease, so com- 



I 



Language preeminent, 107 

plicated, that the ablest are ever learning it unsuccess- 
fully; the most fixed of all things, and the most shifting; 
plain, yet infinitely obscure; the common property of 
ignorance and wisdom; the joint inheritance of the 
ploughboy and the poet; holding nothing, and yet full of 
all things ; all these, and many more like paradoxes are 
reconciled in language. Language is the material ready 
at hand for the training of the whole world. Language 
is the most perfect field of exercise for accuracy, at the 
same time that it is the mistress of all knowledge, and 
the medium of all thought. It combines the greatest 
artistic skill for making the skilled workman, with the 
greatest amount of furniture for stocking his shop. The 
whole world, as it emerges from the nursery, has already 
gained without conscious labour the best material, as has 
been previously shown. No nation can be considered 
therefore to have made a beginning of true educational 
system, which does not use the store of material, which 
the most ignorant have already got, in order to train 
thought, observation, and accuracy. The English lan- 
guage is preeminently qualified to draw out, and exercise 
thought in a systematic and accurate manner, inasmuch 
as there are but few inflexions and word badges, so both 
teacher and learner are forced to consider each word in 
each sentence on its own merits, to think about it, and 
assign its grammatical value by thought, instead of hav- 
ing much of the grammar work already done for them by 
the terminations of the words. This prevents a perni- 
cious exercise of memory from being mistaken for true 
knowledge. Perhaps also this necessity is the explana- 
tion why no one teaches it. But all training ought to 



io8 Comparison of language. 

begin with a quiet mastery of the sentence, the value of 
each word grammatically, the grammatical value of each 
term, and each clause, their necessary connexion, and 
the way in which the whole is built up, thoroughly gone 
through and elucidated in the native language of the 
learner. This is the first step. As soon as the laws of 
thought passing into language have been mastered; and 
those universal necessities of speech spoken to communi- 
cate thought have been known, which belong equally to 
every language in the whole world, and which are exceed- 
ingly simple in principle, and readily understood, when 
clearly stated, before the mind has become clogged with 
mistakes, — then comparison of language ought to begin. 
In other words a strange language should be learnt in 
order to give scope for a greater experience; and to show 
how the same laws under different conditions produce 
exceedingly different apparent results, which nevertheless 
are a true embodiment of the principles. 

We are now coming to the schoolboy's briar-patch ; 
the Latin and the Greek, — with all their vexatious, use- 
less trials, — before any real grasp of the literature and 
life contained in them comes. As few comparatively 
arrive at any real application of their literary excellence, 
if it is right to base all higher education on these languages, 
their claim must rest on something different from mere 
excellence as literature, or they are unfitted for the train- 
ing of the many. No stress therefore will be laid on 
their literary merits here. Though it is fair to mention 
some of them, lest silence should be mistaken for not 
having anything to say, when it only means that there is 
no room to say it, and that it is somewhat beside the 



Latin and Greek, ' 109 

present purpose. No one however will lightly pass by 
the fact, that Latin and Greek are the foundation of 
much of the spoken language of Modern Europe, our 
own included, of all modern literary knowledge, and are 
the only access to the history of the progress of the 
human race, the only realm in which man's intellectual 
greatness can be adequately studied. They are the con- 
summate master-pieces of artistic skill and beauty of 
form, strange tahsmans to call up spirits with, grand 
mausoleums of past glory, marvellous museums of early 
genius, very practical workshops, which might save 
modern workers from repeating old mistakes and ex- 
ploded experiments, num^bers of which the clever ig- 
norance of each generation puts out again, the regular 
stock-in-trade of the shrewd, brand-new pohtician, who 
always thinks he has discovered perpetual motion, always 
is ready with a new pair of hinges for the world. It is 
curious to observe also the strange violations of artistic 
laws committed constantly by really eminent men, which 
could scarcely occur if classical composition, and ancient 
works of art had been familiar ; mistakes which arise 
sometimes from neglecting well-known rules, sometimes 
from an absurd imitation of what is admired, but not 
understood. No sane person thinks himself a poet be- 
cause he writes good Greek Iambics ; or puts them forth 
as poetry; and whenever the world is sane, men will 
cease to regard works of art of any other kind as higher 
than good schoolboy exercises, when they merely reflect 
the ideas of old time. The idolatry of models marks a 
child epoch in any works of mind. But the classical 
models are models of external grace in all subjects which 



no Old material and new. 

the ancient could undertake. A book might be written 
on every one of the headings just recited j any number 
of books indeed, but the whole of this side of the question 
must be excluded, as only partially belonging to school 
work, and utterly incapable of being dealt with in a small 
space ; yet if the first steps to this great higher world of 
thought-power were taken away from the many, numbers 
who now enjoy the benefit would never have had a 
chance given them of doing so ; and some of the very 
best would have been left out altogether. A nation need 
think long and well before it cuts away the first rungs of 
the great thought-ladder from under the feet of its upper 
classes. 

To resume. The study of Greek and Latin simply as 
a matter of training for the many presents itself as a very 
important fact ; part of which shall now be considered. 
At first sight there is a great gap between the learner 
with his own native language, and the learner with Latin 
and Greek given him as his work. There appears no 
slight contradiction between strong advice to take ad- 
vantage of material ready to hand, and immediately after 
strong advice to begin to master the strangest and most 
difficult of new material. This contradiction is heightened 
when the intermediate subject of modern languages is 
thrust in ; and a vigorous claim made on their behalf as 
logically, and in practice, the thing needed. There is 
however no contradiction whatever. It is roughly the 
difference between teaching a lad to ride on a quiet 
horse, and as soon as he can ride mounting him on a 
hunter and sending him across country ; nothing more. 
The common principles of sentence-structure, and uni- 



Elaborate parrots not wanted, 1 1 1 

versal grammar are best learnt in the learner's own 
language. After that all fair difficulties become an ad- 
vantage, not a disadvantage. Observation and accuracy- 
have been laid down as the work of teaching. Observa- 
tion requires novelty, and accuracy requires difficulty for 
practice. 

So the stupendous advantage of their not being spoken 
languages, shall be boldly put forward as the most 
prominent merit of Latin and Greek. No words can 
exaggerate the importance of this fact. It renders it at 
once impossible to substitute the glibness of an elaborate 
parrot, and an infantile famiHarity with the sounds, for a 
real knowledge of the language. In other words, the 
language cannot be learnt by imitation, as by a baby in 
the nursery, who acquires a very useful, and necessary 
faculty of speaking, which no one undervalues ; but ac- 
quires it without the slightest mental training, and cannot 
in any sense be said to have received any education by 
this exercise of memory. A few words on memory will 
not be out of place here, as no subject perhaps is more 
misunderstood, and the misunderstandings arising from 
ignorance on this point affect seriously both the practice 
and the objects of learning. 

Nothing shows more conclusively how poor a faculty 
mere memory is, and how utterly the part it plays in 
education is secondary, and how easily it may be over- 
rated, than the curious fact that the greatest feat of 
memory most persons ever perform in their lives is baby 
work, done in the nursery. The infant in the nursery 
during the first three or four years of his life, sucks in, as 
it were, a language, acquires a considerable vocabulary. 



1 1 2 Baby work not wanted. 

and, stranger still, the various uses of words implied in 
the structure of sentences, which every child who talks 
fluently finds no difficulty in putting together. It is ob- 
vious that if the untrained baby mind can perform this 
feat, without being trained in the least by doing it, that 
the excluding this disturbing element of the parrot from 
the main subjects of training is a priceless gain. Hence 
a modern spoken language, which may easily be nothing 
but a mere repetition of the baby, and must always be 
so in some degree, is put out of court at once as a 
valuable training subject for the young. And all work, 
in like manner, which is memory work only, a heaping in 
of crude material, however valuable it may be, and, how- 
ever much, from various reasons, parents, masters, and 
pupils may stick to it, is unworthy the name of education, 
and, if much valued, is a most injurious idolatry. This 
mechanical collection of material by a sort of instinct is 
however very different in kind from the intelligent pro- 
duction of strong impressions, as Dr Pick* has well 
pointed out, and must not be confounded with it. 
Triumphs of mere memory it has been shown, are not 
only no proof of abihty, but very often stand exceedingly 
in the way of training, and tend to destroy it. Ac- 
cordingly Latin and Greek, as far as they exclude this 
delusive sham, are fitter subjects for education than 
anything that does not do so. The necessity of turning 
the mind however feebly on to the words and sentences 
to be dealt with, instead of soaking them in by a re- 
peated hearing, forms one great reason for choosing them 

* Lecturer on Memory, 28 Queen's Road, London. 



Grammar made visible, 113 

to train the many. Their strangeness is their merit. 
The very facts vulgarly urged against their study turn 
out to be the very c hief reason for studying them. Again, 
as both these languages are strongly inflected, a necessity 
at once arises of att ending to a number of small changes 
of form with corresjjonding change of sense, constantly 
recurring, and proceeding on a most orderly plan, so that 
again, and again, in ewery sentence the same peculiarities 
make their appearance with the same effect; and the 
grammar work when these are once mastered, is to a 
great extent done ready to hand. The eye, without any 
further examination, sees the grammar. These changes, 
like the shapes of the leaves to the botanist, require ob- 
servation, but once ''observed, tell their own story, and 
make everything fall into its proper place, and become 
intelligible. This den 1 and for observation in a thousand 
ways calls on the loo:-;e, slack, happy-go-lucky boy-mind 
to tighten up, get sinev\^, and fasten resolutely on them ; 
at the same time that, if he does so, they satisfy the 
learner's feeling, and reward him by the greater ease and 
clearness of the work. All the little briars and vexations 
of the old word-empire are like the hedge round the en- 
chanted princess in the fairy tale j they torture and slay 
the dawdler; he st'cks amongst them, and never gets 
through; but they open of their own accord to the 
earnest challenger. Vexatious as they appeared at first 
sight they are jus* the supreme excellence by which 
these languages trai : mind, force it to be accurate, and 
make it see the beauty of order. This last point is im- 
portant If though: at once touched thought all men 
would put out the thoughts that moved them most strongly 

T. 8 



1 1 4 Tho2tghts and labeJs. 

first, and the rest in order of strength. But thought does 
not touch thought. Words have to be employed, and 
words come out one by one, and must grammatically, 
that is, by the laws of words, come i n particular order. 
That order is determined, if the words determine it, by 
the necessity that the words should fit together, whether 
they are important or unimportant, ;so as to deliver their 
message coherently ; but if the thoughts determine it, by 
the vividness of the thoughts. These two principles do 
not agree. Thought like a bird would fly straight to its 
mark, but words compel it to go by very round-about 
roads. The ancient languages got over much of this 
difficulty by labelling, as it were, every word, ticketing it 
with its proper value and sense, by changing the last 
syllable, or more. In this manner, as long as too great 
liberties are not taken, or words of the same ending do 
not clash, much greater variety of arrangement becomes 
possible, and the forcible part of the thought can be put 
first in the sentence, though its grammatical place may 
be last, without creating any confusion, because no one 
can mistake it for anything else. 

This faciHty is readily illustrated by figures. Let us 
suppose that the figures go together by pairs. Let i, i, 
2j 2, 3, 3 be taken, it does not matter in the least how 
they are arranged; as far as the meaning of each 
figure is concerned 3 is 3 whether it comes first, or last, 
and the eye sees at once the twin 3 which belongs to it. 
But take on the same plan 11, 11, 11, then if these pairs 
are by theory different, unless they follow one another 
servilely in order of place, no one can tell which ought 
to pair with which, and inextricable confusion is the re- 



Order in disorder. 115 

suit*. It follows from this that an inflected language 
has great power of varying the arrangement of its words 
according to the strength of the thought. Hence arises 
the entirely strange order of the Latin, or Greek sentence, 
which is so puzzling to a beginner, but which, when once 
understood, adds so much to the interest of the work, 
and not unfrequently to the clearness of it, and in con- 
sequence to the ease with which it can be done. What 
a field for thought and observation is opened by this 
new power. The learner is led to compare the two ways 
of expression, to examine the real value of the thought 
intended, to see which of the two languages has suc- 
ceeded in bringing out the true meaning best, and why 
it is best. Even a beginner can be made to see that he 
cannot put the sense of one language into another, until 
he has found out the sense j and the true sense is often 
as different from the apparent sense as a chestnut horse 
from a horse-chestnut. No Englishman who only knows 
his own language is in the least aware how very seldom 
a sentence in English correctly expresses the real meaning 
intended to be conveyed ; as many a boy has found to 
his cost, who has hammered English into Latin words 
regardless whether he had found out the true sense of 
the English or not. The English language is full of 
power, and full of feeling, and produces its great effects 

* Compare, 

3 2 I 2 3 I 

Corripit en subita trepidus formidine ferrum ^neas, 

321231, 

II 223 3 

with ^neas troubled with sudden fear seizes his sword, 

T12233. 



1 1 6 Muddle and knavery. 

by the use of very pregnant epithets, and strong sub- 
stantives, which teem with undefined vigour and hfe. 
The Latin language is intensely logical, and precise. 
Two more opposite instruments for the expression of 
thought cannot be imagined. The moment the subtle 
Latin probe comes to be applied to the English sentence, 
the discovering the exact sense contained in the forcible, 
inaccurate English words becomes a most curious exercise 
of mind. It is no answer to this statement to say it is 
not done. No one knows better than the writer that in 
the empire of King Topsy-Turvy, and his rote work, 
nothing of the kind can be done. There is no time for 
it, and no one to teach it ; but nevertheless it is one of 
the principal facts of language-study, and it ought to be 
done. As long as the great majority of educated people 
do not know the precise meaning of their own language, 
when they use it, the confusion and muddle in public 
and private life must be as great as it is. A man who knows 
the real meaning of his own words will not use them 
ambiguously unless he is a knave ; and if he is a knave, 
an audience accustomed to study thought in its pro- 
cesses of taking shape in words will detect his knavery. 
At present words have absurd power because they are 
swallowed whole. But a generation trained carefully to 
find out the precise thought embedded in an English 
sentence, with its arrangement according to grammar, 
and not according to force of meaning, and accustomed 
to rearrange it carefully in the clearest and most forcible 
way, according to strength of meaning, and not according 
to the demands of the grammar, would come to their 
work with a different kind of mind. The anatomical 



Sentence-anatomy. 117 

study of thought embodied in language can scarcely be 
pursued with any great success in one language only, and 
the Latin and the Greek languages are the most perfect 
means for teaching this science. All the more effectual 
because our own native tongue is so utterly different in 
its way of treating thought that observation is roused by 
every sentence; and observation and accuracy are the 
natural consequence of any true system of teaching the 
ancient masterpieces of the expression of thought. The 
pulling sentences to pieces in order to find out the different 
ways employed by different languages in producing the 
same thought to the world is work which even a be- 
ginner is capable of doing, and profiting by, in no slight 
degree. Later on, as soon as a little progress is made, 
the exquisite beauty of words set in perfect shape, as the 
beautiful dress of noble thought, begins to be discerned. 
The fascination of clear-cut, crystalline speech, reflecting 
and embodying feeling, and life, and delicate perceptions 
of mind, is felt. None can tell why, but none, who has 
ever seen it, can forget the charm, the magic charm, of 
perfect words. In this way the learner grows a new 
sense, and advances to the intelligent observation of 
beauty, until at last the fact comes out that the highest 
thoughts of the highest minds of the wonderful old world 
are presented in their highest shape to the mind's eye 
with a tenderness and grace, and symmetry, and har- 
monious outline, which has never been surpassed, and 
never will be ; for our worship has passed on from the 
outward glory of form to the inward glory of spirit and 
life. But this is all the more reason that the artist in 
words should study these as the artistic study, without 



ii8 Artistic skill. 

which no great writer or speaker, however well he may 
write or speak, can be a conscious master of his art; 
without which great writers and speakers, the few, that is, 
who lack this knowledge, frequently betray by blemishes 
and curious defects, that in spite of their success they 
want the training, which a better education can give. 
The world will never know what it has been saved from 
in the way of outrages on good sense and taste even by 
the limited knowledge of Greek and Latin authors that 
the average schoolboy acquires. Though some guess 
may be made by noting the utterances of the clever 
ignorant who make themselves conspicuous by their 
tongues. 

This sketch would be too imperfect if it did not bring 
forward another great fact which will ever put the study 
of Greek and Latin at the top of educational subjects. 
The unchanging character of the old languages is a prac- 
tical advantage of the strongest kind. As being Greek 
and Latin they are old, as being languages they are 
eternally young. For more than two thousand years men 
have been engaged in studying these works ; and century 
after century fresh ability is brought to bear on them, and 
they are daily put out in more attractive forms ; and 
adapted skilfully for student use. Every new discovery 
in archaeology throws fresh light on them ; every advance 
in politics and religion throws fresh light on them. ; and 
receives fresh light from them ; whilst all the time they 
remain the same. For a thousand years they have been 
worked in England as the highest form of education ; 
and as the years pass by ingenuity exhausts itself in 
bringing them out in fresh attire for high and low, for the 



Perfect fixity, perfect mobility. 1 1 9 

learned and the school-boy alike, and ever will continue 
to do so. For the minds of men will never cease in- 
vestigating these marvels of mind ; and every advance in 
language knowledge as thought taking a living shape, will 
cast light backwards on the unsurpassable perfection of 
the early shapes in which thought was enshrined, the more 
the growth of life, and its passing into words is studied. 

There is then perfect fixity, and perfect mobility in 
this ancient literature viewed as a training. Perfect fixity, 
inasmuch as the written word does not change. Perfect 
mobility, inasmuch as the power of life to interpret fife is 
ever changing, and growing greater. Their fixity enables 
generation after generation to send them on unchanged 
in substance, but enriched with every advantage that new 
discoveries give. Their mobility ensures perpetual novelty; 
since the nobler the literature of any country may be, 
the higher the minds engaged in it ; the better qualified 
that country and those minds are to see the old models 
in new lights, to test their own work by them, and make 
fresh apphcations of their principles. Shakespear himself 
might find his powers taxed to put the ancient beauty of 
words into words as beautiful of our day : how much 
more shall the task exercise the busy brains of teachers, 
however able, to the end of time ! There is always some- 
thing to improve on. The ultimate end of the study of 
the classics is to make the learner an artist in words, and 
a conscious master of his own tongue. Though men 
have been now at work for centuries how much remains 
to be done in this field. In some respects the study has 
scarcely yet begun. But long before any artistic skill is 
called out the early stages are fitted to open the mental 



1 20 The briar-patch bears fruit. 

eye, to make it observant, to fix habits of accuracy, and 
awaken thought. Without saying a word more, (and how 
much more might be said,) it is evident what a marvellous 
instrument of training has been provided for these latter 
days in this ever-fixed, and ever-changeful embodiment 
of powerful life ; and how strangely adapted it is to bring 
out latent faculties, to perfect the skilled workman, to 
make him an artist of mind, and save him from the mis- 
takes of untutored strength, and the gewgaws of rank 
imagination, so that he shall not flaunt himself like a 
savage in his war paint : whilst the accuracy engendered 
is no mean power added to the ordinary stuff of ordinary 
men. The very beginning of skill enables the skilled 
workman to direct his mind aright, to employ v^hat strength 
he has without waste, and prevents him from worshipping 
false types, and being deluded by clever charlatans. These 
are facts. They are facts moreover which are the out- 
come of principles of irresistible truth. No fashion how- 
ever triumphant, no ignorance however powerful, can 
lower the value of the most skilful expression of thought 
and mind-power. Man the thinker must always be 
trained to think by exercising his faculties on the most 
perfect works of thought. It is no accident but a veritable 
law of nature that makes the highest language-study rank 
as the highest training. And though it is quite immaterial 
to the theory of teaching what subject has to be taught; 
it is not immaterial what subject is taken as the most 
perfect illustration of the Theory. Enough has been said 
to show that language, and Greek, and Latin, are the most 
perfect practice-ground in the world for training mind. 
So much for the boys' briar-patch. 



CHAPTER IX. 



THE THEORY OF TEACHING. 

The Furniture Shop, and the Skilled Workman. 

The kettle, lid on or off, and the pumper, give a very 
true picture of modern theory and practice. But it is 
clear from what has been said that pumping in knowledge 
is not education. Everyone can supply examples where 
there was much knowledge, and no education. When 
this is the case, knowledge is not power, and the common 
axiom is seen to be a fallacy. But if knowledge can thus 
fail even when it succeeds, how much greater a failure is 
there when it does not succeed j when knowledge is not 
gained, and education is not gained, as must always be 
the case in a vast number ot instances, where the pursuit 
of knowledge is made the main object. The Teacher 
and the Trainer has to make his pupil strong, and skilful 
in himself, to direct existing powers, and call new powers 
into existence. The learner does not want to be made a 
receptacle of other men's words and thoughts, but to be 



122 The knowledge-shop. 

made a thinker of thoughts, and a wielder of words him- 
self. It is true that material must be collected or there 
can be no thought; and that the thinker, as Aristotle 
says, must learn to become a skilled workman by working 
at that in which his skill is afterwards to be shown ; so 
far knowledge is necessary. But it is equally true that 
the perpetual heaping in of more material is easily pushed 
to an extent that renders thinking over any of it im- 
possible ; just as a man who spent his life in collecting 
timber in order to do carpenter's work would never be a 
carpenter, though he had stacks on stacks of planks in 
his timber-yard, no not even if the timber had already 
been made into furniture by other hands. In fact a shop 
full of ready-made furniture on the one side, and the skilled 
workman with his tools, and his skill, on the other, do 
most accurately express the great distinction between the 
walking knowledge-shop, and the thinker with power in 
himself. It is true that few acquire great knowledge 
without some thought, and also that the thoughts of other 
people often pass current as the speaker's or writer's 
own ; but this circumstance will not in any way com- 
plicate the question with those who can, and will, look 
to principles. Mere knowledge is not power ; and mere 
knowledge is not education. 

To approach the question from another side; the 
possession of great knowledge is given but to few. The 
average of general efficiency is alone worth considering 
in dealing with what teaching and training can do. Here 
there neither is, nor can be, any doubt. Workmen are 
wanted. The work of the world cannot get on without 
workmen, even the shops cannot exist unless there have 



Th& skilled workman. 123 

been skilled workmen. The need of the world at any 
moment is not wealth, that is, the result of work finished 
and done; but work, and workers, that is, the living 
power and skill that continue to produce. Production 
comes before display, production comes before making 
up; without the producing power how poor, how im- 
possible, prolonged possession becomes. Many a nation 
has had reason to confess the truth of Burke's statement, 
"Riches, which have neither eyes, nor hands, nor any- 
thing truly vital in them, cannot long survive the being 
of their vivifying powers, their legitimate masters, and 
their potent protectors.^' This is equally true of the 
gathered wealth of hand or brain. Indeed it is not too 
much to say that experience has shown that an undue 
attention to knowledge, and undue honour paid to learn- 
ing, is the characteristic of decline. Whether this be 
admitted or not, workers are wanted. And the ordinary 
mind with the ordinary memory cannot accumulate wealth 
of knowledge, and is but a poor shop ; whilst it can be 
trained to do very good work, and turned out in the 
world-market a skilled workman at high wages. Few 
have the time at their command to pile in knowledge. 
And there is Httle room for many such accumulators. 
In fact a great memory is a great maker of common-place, 
unless overmatched by much original power; and the 
attempt to load the mind with knowledge often means 
crowding out all originality and freshness, and putting 
very little in. 

The moment the question is confined to its real issue, 
the welfare of the many, it becomes simple. Everybody 
sees that the bulk of mankind never under any circum- 



124 Fetiche-worship. 

stances can be full of learning. But everybody can see 
that under fair conditions they may reasonably be expected 
to have their powers well trained, to be active in mind, 
skilful and capable. This ought to be kept in sight. 
The dazzling success of a few, who are revered and 
honoured through a sort of fetiche-worship, by brains as 
active, and often far more useful, has served to put the 
hunt on a false trail. Not the success of a few, deserved 
or not deserved, fetiche-worship or true honour, is the 
object of any system, that deals with the human race and 
their welfare. Extensive knowledge can never be the 
possession of the many, excellent power of doing skilled 
work can. If no other arguments were of any value this 
alone would be conclusive against pumping in knowledge 
being the first duty of the teacher. Nevertheless the 
demand for knowledge is the main demand in this gene- 
ration; and knowledge is producible on demand, when 
it is there; training is not, or only partially so. This 
affects teaching, and affects it in a very serious way. All 
the world knows Socrates. Many schools of philosophy, 
and a countless number of paths of research, and a count- 
less number of learned men, owe their existence to Socrates. 
Socrates was a great teacher ; but in modern phrase he 
taught nothing. Socrates is judged to be the greatest 
teacher the secular world ever had; but he poured no 
knowledge in, whether by pumping on kettles open or 
shut. Socrates gave a description of himself as a teacher. 
He describes himself as a man-midwife for mind; who 
assisted other people to bring into the world new births 
of mind. What a noble, yet simple definition of what 
all teaching should contemplate, new births of mind. 



Socrates and examiners. 125 

He created a science of questioning, which to this hour 
bears his name; but the answers were theoretically already 
in the persons questioned. His system presupposed 
material gathered, but material gathered in order to be 
made the after-structure of thought. His questions have 
been searching the world ever since they were put into 
it, and have quickened the perception of all generations ; 
but Socrates could not have produced a single pupil able 
to show a modern examiner what he had gained ; or to 
satisfy (satisfy we call it) an examiner's demand for know- 
ledge in a modern examination paper. In the first place, 
Socrates imparted no knowledge at all; and examinations 
have knowledge as their work and aim. Socrates there- 
fore v/ould be nowhere in an examiner's specimen list. 
Socrates again scornfully rejected everything of the 
Manual type, and all cut-and-dried rules and formulas, 
but these are the stock in trade of competitive examina- 
tions. Socrates therefore would starve in the enlightened 
nineteenth century as a teacher; there is no room for 
teachers. He would have to wear shoes, and — make 
them, for a livelihood. On the other hand, Socrates the 
Teacher, not the shoemaker, appHed so subtle an instru- 
ment of mind by his questions to all he met that he 
forced them to sift and arrange their ideas. Socrates the 
teacher sent a plough into the hearts of men, and broke 
up the ground, and then followed with living breath of 
strange efficacy, like a spring wind, and called out into 
new existence all the latent germinating power, all the 
push of life within. Socrates sent new longings, and new 
capacities for satisfying longings, into his disciples, not 
new knowledge in the modern sense : and the receptive 



I 



1 26 Socrates plucked. 

mind gathered strength, and clearness, felt its want, and 
eagerly set about supplying it. So it came to pass that 
Socrates who taught nothing, produced disciples that 
learnt everything. 

Nevertheless the hard fact remains that Socrates, as a 
Teacher, would starve in modern England, and be plucked 
him.self in a competitive examination. There would be 
nothing to produce to — satisfy an examiner. The nature 
of things makes the extremes of the most perfect training 
on the one hand, and of producible knowledge on the 
other, absolutely antagonistic. Or, in other words, the 
time spent in questioning with a view to train, cannot be 
spent in carting in knowledge with a view to turn it out 
again on demand. The importance of the distinction 
however is not seen in the best men. The best men 
under either system have made themselves in many ways, 
irrespective of their system, and would be eminent from 
their own energy without system, or under any system. 
What becomes of the average, or the unsuccessful worker, 
is the real question. The vain attempt to get knowledge 
results in emptiness, and a stohd unbelief in education. 
The attempt to get training results in the strength being 
improved as far as it is capable of being improved, and 
as much skill being acquired as the case admits of. The 
first ends in a diseased state of mind ; the second in a 
healthy condition however weak it may be. The inter- 
penetration of these two rival principles in the great 
majority of cases renders a subject, which in theory is 
clear enough, in practice not so clear. There is however 
little difficulty in seeing which of the two rivals is being 
pushed to an extreme at any time, if the kind of teaching 



The p2L7np rules the world. 127 

in vogue is brought into the witness-box ; and next, an 
investigation made as to who are taught, and who are left 
untaught j and next the tests of the work, and the value 
set on it, are passed in review briefly. 

On the iirst of these topics there is little room for 
doubt. The kind of teaching that is more and more 
coming up over the land is sufficiently indicated by the 
number of Manuals, which like the frogs in Egypt, come 
up, and swarm, yea even in the very bedchambers, cover- 
ing the tables, and littering the floors. These are the 
natural literature of Class-rooms where the demand for a 
producible article prevails, and has turned the individual 
in charge of the class into a kind of clerk of the works, 
whose main business it is to make the workers tie up little 
packets of rules, label them neatly, docket them, and 
pack them into the pigeon-holes of memory, to be brought 
out whenever asked for, pat ! This state of things pro- 
duces Grammars also bristhng with technical terms, labels 
for everything, endless lists of endless usages, all with 
their separate names; because a name, whether under- 
stood or not, can be produced at call, when the simple 
principle, by which the thought takes shape in words, 
would very often explain them all without the need of 
names, but then this cannot be learnt as a lesson by rote 
by forty boys at a time ; or pulled out as an answer to 
the question " Give Grammaticus's rule for the Dativus 
quinquagesimus. " 

Manuals, and rules, and technical terms; technical 
terms, rules, and manuals, possess the land and bear 
potent witness to the theory of the Pump. The next 
step is a necessary consequence. As soon as individual 



128 School failures got 7'id of. 

minds are not the province of a teacher's work, nor each 
separate difficulty his care, as soon as knowledge, rules, 
and memory engross attention, numbers are imm.aterial. 
There is the prescribed packet to be learnt, if a boy does 
not learn it, it is no business of the clerk of the works, 
beyond punishing him for not doing it. This soon passes 
into a neglect of those who cannot, or will not, pigeon- 
hole the daily quota ; this naturally advances to finding 
them very much in the way ; the next step is that in the 
interest of the better boys (so runs the story) they must be 
got rid of So the school failures are turned out, and 
great authority quoted to support the practice ; and all 
the energy of the place is expended on the strong and 
active, who will distinguish themselves in the knowledge 
scramble. 

The picture is complete when Examinations close the 
scene. Let it be stated at once clearly, emphatically, 
without reservation, that examinations are an excellent 
rough method of deciding whether ignorance is before 
you. As a pass standard to judge dishonest neglect or 
culpable idleness, they are efficient. But the moment 
they are applied as arbiters of merit over a large area, 
the case is very different; especially if they are taken up 
as a national system. The space to be covered is wide ; 
vast numbers have to be dealt with. Many different 
kinds of work, and many different methods of working 
are brought within their range. Are all the varieties of 
living growth to be reduced to a lifeless uniformity in 
order to make them capable of being appraised by Exa- 
miners ? Even then, where can Examiners be found in 
sufficient number to do the work, at such a cost as is 



Doctors differ. 129 

practicable ? Moreover there is no agreement at present 
on the principles by which an Examiner is to examine, 
or on the points he is to gauge. One University takes 
an idea of cleverness as its standard. The Examiner is 
to judge what he considers to be cleverness, and marks 
by impression. What is cleverness ? When that is de- 
cided, which it never will be, and the Examiner settles 
down to his work, by the time he has looked over fifty 
papers following, his impressions are not infallible, human 
frailty will have its way sometimes. Another University 
demands accuracy, and marks by faults, but even the 
relative value of faults admits of wide difference of 
opinion. Some Examiners give great credit for showy 
diction, which others again consider a sign of weakness. 
Others like logical and concise statements, and so on. 
In fact the whole domain of examination is a wilderness, 
with but few landmarks. Again, Examiners are scarce, 
and the prizes of examinations great. If the same men 
are constantly employed, as of necessity they must be 
if the demand for Examiners is very considerable, those 
whose interest it is to do so get to know their peculiari- 
ties, and narrow their work to please them, and to win ; 
and thus throw better teachers out of the race. Again 
most Examiners are young, and are sent fresh from their 
books, and their laurels, to pass judgment on what they 
have not been accustomed to, and tabulate the lifelong 
labours of men, who having been their equals in intel- 
lectual honours twenty, thirty, forty years before, have 
added since the experience of successful work during 
those years to their early success in book-work. If 
books are the work of life, this is not incorrect.; but if 

T. 9 



130 The patient killed. 

teaching mind is the work of life, it is destruction. It is 
not the purpose of this book to discuss examinations 
fully, enough has probably been said to show that exa- 
minations are very efficient for judging neglect or idle- 
ness ; are also efficient in a very few well-defined in- 
stances in determining a certain kind of merit, but that 
they break down utterly from many reasons over a wider 
field. They are also most fascinating exercises of power 
to those who believe in them. If memory, rules, and 
neatly packed knowledge make men, up with the flag, 
enlist our workers under the banner of Examinations. 

But if education, and training, are the true aim of 
mankind, and power in a man's self the prize of life, 
then no superstition ever ate into a healthy national 
organism more fatal than the cult of the Examiner. 
Better in its degree the negro bowing down before the 
ghastliest fetiche, than the civilized Mumbo-jumboism 
which thinks it can award over a whole kingdom the 
palm of mind. Examinations in that case are but an- 
other name for death to originality, and all improvement 
that is original. 



CHAPTER X. 



THE THEORY OF TEACHING. 



The Teacher. 

The ground has now been so far cleared as to make 
it possible to define in some degree what is Teaching, 
and what is a Teacher. In theory it is both possible 
and useful to separate Teaching entirely from the acqui- 
sition of knowledge. The subject of Teaching is mind, 
and its work the strengthening of mind, and development 
of mental faculties. The mind in this is like the body. 
And in the case of the body it is possible and useful to 
separate games and gymnastics entirely from smithy work, 
or any exercise of strength, which in any particular trade 
produces a saleable article.' And gymnastics, games, 
pedestrianism, and other forms of bodily exertion, are 
practised vigorously for the sake of the elastic and varied 
power given to the body by their practice, totally regard- 
less of the fact that only health and strength, and not 

9—2 



132 P hinder is not skill. 

money, result from all the toil. Indeed the one pre- 
eminent mark of the highbred man is the simple play of 
limbs that move with perfect ease, and, as they move, 
throw off a sense of liberty, and grace, and unconstrained 
command of strength, able at any moment to do anything 
that courage may demand of activity, or duty impose on 
endurance. Whilst some awkwardness of burly power 
here, or weakness there, betrays the man compelled to 
gain his livelihood by some particular kind of work to 
which his muscles must conform their action. Let then 
the mere acquisition of knowledge be put on one side 
as not belonging in the first instance to the theory of 
teaching, any more than wages belong to the theory of 
training the body. For somewhat the same reason a 
strong distinction must also be drawn between teaching 
and learning. There are many ways of learning, where 
the learner with more or less success occupies himself in 
working to do this or that branch of bread-winning skill ; 
or in filling in material for use. But all these doings of 
work no more belong to teaching and mental training of 
necessity, than filling up a waggon with plunder, and 
driving it off home, belongs to the artistic skill which by 
its excellent cunning created the treasures which are 
plundered and carried off. Teaching means dealing 
with mind. And Teachers are artificers of mind. 

From this point of view the sole question is, how far 
it is possible to deal with the individual mind. If it is not 
possible there can be no true teachers. And as long as 
knowledge is put forward as the object of education, and 
a given weight required to be weighed out, and taken, 
teaching is not possible. Some of the school shopkeepers 



The block-system. 133 

may throw more interest and life into the shop-work than 
others, but there can be no true teaching. The fact 
on which all true teaching hinges is this, that every 
movement which strengthens the mind is a gain; and 
all true teaching makes movement. Whereas every lump 
that burdens the mind is a loss ; and memory-work is 
lump-work, and when the mind is blocked by the lumps 
upset into it, farewell hope of better things. Hearers 
of lessons are in plenty. But if it is indeed true that the 
individual mind has to be dealt with, and that no one is 
a teacher who is prevented from doing this work of 
moving mind, or who cannot do it, where are the Teachers 
to come from? Teachers are a very artistic product. 
They do not grow, like mustard and cress on a bottle, by 
just sprinkling a few Minutes of Council by authority 
over the land. \ A Teacher is a combination of heart, 
head, artistic training, and favouring circumstances. Like 
all other high arts life must have free play in the exercise 
of teaching or teaching cannot be. Mechanic work can 
be ordered by the foot, and measured, and paid for, 
by the foot-rule ; teaching work cannot. No true School- 
master can produce the minds of his Class as specimens 
on a board, with a pin stuck through them, like a collec- 
tion of beetles. Shoving in the regulation quantity into 
the pupils, to be pulled out again on demand, is one 
thing ; clearing the bewildered brain, and strengthening 
the mind is another. 

Teaching means skilful questioning to force the mind 
to see, to arrange, to act. The Teacher will first take 
care by some practical home thrusts to waken attention, 
and compel the boy to consider why he is spending money 



134 ^^^ Mtises were womanly. 

and time at school, instead of earning money as a farmer's 
boy in the fields. He will then go on to probe his pupil's 
mind and rouse his curiosity as to school and its work ; 
why Latin and Greek form so large a part of the work, 
and what is meant by Composition. When this has been 
questioned out of a boy he is in a condition to begin. 
True teaching requires liberty, and a delicate hand. Let 
no rough unfeeling touch knock against the young heart. 
The Muses surely had womanly sweetness, and gentle 
hands to endear them to the children of the early world. 
When the beginner is ready to begin, and these preworking 
laws have been complied with, then the highest thoughts 
of the highest men in their truest and most perfect shape 
have been shown to be the exercise ground of mind; 
and the love of what is true, and beautiful, and the highest, 
to be the way by which mind travels through its kingdom 
to its throne. 

First comes reading with its claims. The value of 
good reading aloud has never been recognised. Good 
reading is the first training of the beginner, the last 
crowning excellence and consummate perfection of the 
finished master of all perfected culture. All skill of heart, 
of head, of lips, is summed up in the charmed sound 
of noble utterance falling with thrilling melody on the 
souls of those over whom a great reader casts his spell. 
Reading again is the sole giver of words and teacher of 
word-meaning. When it is considered that words rightly 
understood mean new thoughts, or new appreciation of 
thoughts, new subtleties of observation, new powers of 
collecting treasure, the supreme importance of good 
reading will be seen. It is computed that the untaught 



Langtiage is thought in shape. 135 

non-reader uses about 400 words, and has his mind 
penned within that small enclosure, whilst Shakespear 
uses 15,000. And every word is a new thought during 
all the learning stages. And it is certain, that all 
knowledge which man imparts to man passes through 
words ; and it is certain, that the children of well-to-do 
families, many of them, are woefully ignorant of the 
meaning of the commonest words in their own language. 
The Teacher will read, and will teach his pupils to read. 
That is the first step. Next the Hving being comes to be 
taught how to lead the useful and true life. The Teacher 
will utihse, expand, vivify, train the life he already has in 
him. He will rouse the love of thought, inspirit the 
courage, quicken the energy, feed the curiosity, and call 
out the endurance of the young traveller on the threshold 
of a new world. Mind is his subject, thought the work 
to be done. The moment language is viewed as thought 
moving, and making its own shape as it moves, the 
Teacher finds a happy hunting ground full of game ; and 
without book, by simple questions can surprise his pupils 
into all sorts of discoveries, and make them frame for 
themselves every rule of Grammar, and arrange their own 
mind-machinery, at the same time that they can be made 
to see how every thought that takes shape, the bench 
they sit on, the picture on the wall, the building they are 
in, yea, the whole created world, have been obedient 
each in their way, to the same great laws of composition ; 
and, since all are thoughts taking shape, all have been 
shaped and wrought on the same principles. And the 
old worm-eaten stuffed skins of Grammar rules which 
made words, dead words, their function, and treated 



136 Learning to read. 

them as dead, apart from living thought, will in time 
find their way to the curiosity shops, and the garrets. 

Interest has to be roused. The Teacher having first 
made his Class alive to the world-wide sweep of language ; 
and how words, and painting, and sculpture, and all 
shapes seen by mortal eye are different ways by which 
thought struggles to make itself felt; and having made 
clear the wonderful mystery of the commonest talk, and 
thus opened the mind to unexpected discoveries in com- 
mon things, will proceed to enlarge the scope of this 
magic familiarity, and unfamiliar magic. He will take 
common things, and give them a tongue, or rather will 
force his hearers to do so. The inkstands which hold 
their ink, the chairs they sit on, the paper on which 
they write, the room they are in, the games they play, any- 
thing and everything, the commoner the better, can be 
pressed into service, and by dexterous questioning and 
crossquestioning be made first of all to give out all the 
very complex thoughts which they embody by their shape, 
their material, their history, their making, their present 
condition, what they have done, have seen, have helped, 
&c., and secondly, whilst full of exciting novelty, can 
force with skilful treatment the answerer to overhaul his 
whole mental stock, disentangle all the confused ideas, 
sort, separate, arrange, put in order the facts he knows 
indeed, but has never before known that he knew them, 
or cast a thought about their having right places, every 
one of them, and not being a mere loose jumble like 
potatoes in a sack. In this way the Teacher creates a 
new world, new in its facts, new in its suggestive power, 
new in the faculty of order and composition. 



The momitain'Climbe7^, 137 

So far of interest in common things. But England 
has travellers, colonies, great men, great deeds. The 
Teacher, if allowed, will take them; and having already- 
flung away his grammars until his class has made a gram- 
mar for themselves, will proceed to fling away his other 
rule books, and make the narratives of noble deeds, the 
lives of great men, vivid travels, descriptive novels, poetry, 
and all the fascinations of modern discoveries serve as 
text books, in which the more rigid fact work and bits of 
necessary clamping are in their proper place. By skilful 
questions, the Teacher will direct attention, train it, keep 
it alive, give the observant eye and accurate power, and 
make all the marvels of sea, and land, mountain, forest, 
and river, all the fauna and flora of the world, and stars 
above, and earth beneath, speak through living channels 
to the lives he is dealing with. New surprises will ever 
be springing out of the familiar sights and familiar words. 
Labour there will be; plenty of it; but the labour of the 
mountain-climber who presses up hill with the delight of 
an excursion day come at last, and not like a donkey 
slowly dragged up by strong hands in front, with a whip 
behind. Teachers, if allowed, will m.ake the toil endura- 
ble for the sake of the accompanying freshness, novelty, 
and strength. But then they must be allowed to teach, 
allowed to give living realities, allowed to move freely in 
the world of hfe, and not shut up in bad Museums with 
specimens. 

Then again in far off lands and ages yet to come, no 
Teacher will enter his Class-room without being prepared 
to make his hands help his head, and by rapid sketches 
to put before his Class in a vivid way all things capable 



138 Pictorial reality. 

of being illustrated by sight, and pictured to the eye. 
And Photography will be called in also to imprint the 
reality of men, and cities, and famous lands on untravel- 
led readers, until no school shall be thought a school at 
all which does not use such helps more familiarly than 
the black boards. In this way the Teacher will by de- 
grees get the minds of his pupils accustomed to the idea 
of definite impressions and sight. Living in an atmo- 
sphere of reality they will follow easily, and with will, 
those questions by which he draws out of them the pic- 
torial facts of every poem, every narrative they read; 
instead of staring, as they do now, dumb and stolid, when 
the picture they cannot draw for themselves, and will not 
allow to be pulled out of them, is finally painted in words 
for them, and — not looked at, not appreciated enough to 
be rejected. Modern Classes will do anything, grovel 
through any mud, crawl down any ditch, so it be dug for 
them, rather than stand upright, look round, see the facts 
and — think; though the moment the right fact is set 
before the mind, the right answer cannot help but follow; 
and the lesson how to work has begun. How to work ! 
In those words Hes everything. And — no English boy 
goes to school to learn how to work. They go to learn 
lessons and have lessons heard, and corrected. But the 
Teacher teaches how to work. Let it not be supposed 
that all the wide space in word-land which no picture 
can reach has been forgotten. No. But life reaches it, 
it is drybones no more. At the touch of life all the dead 
rules and musty catalogues of dead names vanish away, 
and a new spirit passes into the remainder full of intelli- 
gent interest. The subtle play of words as they dance 



Dragged or guided. 139 

out of one language into another, the exquisite sameness 
which is not the same draws by a resistless charm those 
who once see it. And the pictorial mind trained to draw 
pictures caft live a very real life with thoughts that breathe 
and burn; or at least can feel the sinewy growth of greater 
power of life conferred by such companionship. The 
difference is unspeakable between working blindfold, 
working in chains, and being guided through a glorious 
country, though the road is the same, and the landscape 
is the same. And it is the difference between doing les- 
sons and having a Teacher. The Teacher, if allowed to 
do so, will lead on his workers by intelligent exercise to 
a willing acceptance at last of the toil which alone makes 
strong. And they standing on the verge of the great 
unknown land of life, and thought, and song, and hero 
deeds, for the sake of that which they have already seen 
will be ready to go on and do the self-denying work, and 
bear with hardihood the necessary labour of exploring 
the territory they have to make their own by exploring; 
and will not count it self-denial, or hardihood, for the 
joy they take in the active energy of the doing it. And 
so passing from happy life to happy life through labour, 
and ever increasing demands on strength and courage, 
the workers are led on by a true teacher to play their 
part like men, when their hour comes, and be they 
strong, or be they weak, to bring trained powers and 
do good service, each in their place. 

This is the Theory of Teaching. 

And a Teacher is one, who has liberty, and time, and 
heart enough, and head enough, to be a master in the 
kingdom of life; one, whose delight it has been to study 



140 Dreams not illegal. 

mind, not in books, but in the strange realities of dull 
and ignorant pupils; one, who has found joy in darting 
a ray of light into dark corners, and wakening up hope 
and interest in the scared lesson-learners who have not 
learnt; one, who can draw out latent power from the 
lowest, and quicken, inspirit, and impart^, new senses to 
the highest. 

A Teacher has as his subject life and mind. 

A Teacher's life is in living beings, not in printer's 
ink, 

A Teacher is an Artificer of mind and noble life. 

Above all, a Teacher never lets a single life of those 
put into his hands be spoiled, or wasted, or flung aside 
through neglect, or scorn. 

A Teacher is the helper and friend of the weak. 

That is a Teacher. 

There is no law against dreaming. Though law and 
public opinion make Teaching impossible, though there 
be no Teacher and can be no Teacher any more, dreams 
are beyond law. Men still can dream. 



\ 



PART II, 



CHAPTER I. 



THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING. 

The Woi'kman^ and the Reader. 

The general theory of practical education has been 
roughly stated, and an outline sketched of the main facts 
which decide absolutely what a nation ought to have in 
view for the training of its leading classes. The fallacy 
of the maxim that knowledge is power, in the ordinary 
acceptation of that maxim, has been shown, and the 
need of drawing out the power that is in the man him- 
self, exercising it, and implanting new faculties, (for they 
amount to nothing less,) has been pointed out. It is 
perfectly possible to lay down laws for producing bodily 
strength. It must be no less possible to find out the 
conditions which are required to produce mental strength, 
as soon as that is seen to be the object. When these 
are established with certainty, as without doubt they can 
be, many difficulties which at present appear insuperable, 
will vanish. No attempt however has been made to 



144 Life touches life. 

deal with the existing state of things, or to argue out the 
question by exhaustive reasonings. Neither is the con- 
struction of a perfect school any part of the plan. Whe- 
ther what has been laid down is practicable, or not, at 
the present time, or what is going to be stated is prac- 
ticable, or not, at the present time, does not fall within the 
compass of this work. There is no intention to win adhe- 
rents. This treatise is a worker's treatise addressed in the 
first instance to workers ; and it will be interpreted accord- 
ing to their work. If they are in harmony with it it will 
be felt by them, like the sunshine and the air, as part of 
their health and their strength, needing no arguments 
beyond their own feelings and experience. It will glide 
out of one life into another with the silent conviction of 
life. Or if they differ, they will nevertheless understand, 
and think over the matter, and readjust perhaps the focus 
of their thoughts. At all events, being workers, being 
in earnest, they will not proceed to dress up strawmen, 
call them their opponent's case, and demolish them, 
after the fashion of those amateurs, whom omniscient 
ignorance sets in the judge's seat. Those again who are 
honourably engaged in a routine not their own, and are 
doing honourable work under defective systems, uncon- 
scious often that they are defective, will respect a worker's 
words. Some few there are, good men also, who crystal- 
lized by habit, and circumstances stronger than their own 
power to deal with, have already made up their minds, 
and are committed to another line, by all they have ever 
said or done, by all their hopes, and all their fame ; they 
unconsciously, like the wolf in the fable, do not want 
arguments but dinner. Well let them dine : the victim 



1 he material and the work. 145 

has still one hope left that he may prove somewhat indi- 
gestible. 

This treatise is above all things addressed to workers 
first ; and a worker's words to workers have an existence 
of their own. The fustian coat is out of place in the 
drawing room, but feels at home amongst the machinery 
and the oil. And everything pertaining to work, sooner 
or later, comes to a question of the material to be 
worked, and the means at disposal for doing the work, 
the machinery and oil. The first question of the prac- 
tice of teaching is, what kind of material comes into the 
teacher's hands, combined with its counterpart, what kind 
of work is practical teaching. 

The kind of material that has to be dealt with pro- 
vides the first test of experience and inexperience, obser- 
vant work and hack work, practice and dreams. The 
skilled workman is always known by his judgment on his 
material. What is a carpenter who cannot judge wood ? 
a builder w^ho cannot judge bricks and mortar ? a teacher 
who cannot judge mind ? For minds have to be dealt 
with, if minds have to be trained ; and all else, books, or 
men, must be adapted to the work of training minds, as 
minds really are, not as brain-spinners im.agine them to 
be. The blind cannot be taught to draw, however skilful 
the artist that teaches; music is no good to the deaf. 
And in like manner it is quite possible that the authori- 
ties, who have the popular ear, have mistaken the task 
before them. They may play with exceeding skill, and 
yet, perchance because of their very skill, be quite out 
of reach of the poor deaf boy-world below them, and 
tootle up above to the great delight of all — but those 

T. 10 



146 Tootling to the deaf. 

that need it most; who persist in refusing to hear the 
voice of the charmer charm he never so wisely; perhaps 
for the somewhat conclusive reason that they cannot 
hear. The first question is what the minds to be dealt 
with are ; not what they ought to be ; but what they are ; 
the actual material that generations of neglect, or idle- 
ness, or wrong methods, or dull homes, or money-loving 
cities, or any other form of stunted life may send forth 
as the average type of boy pupil. A wide space lies 
between dreamland and factland here. It would be 
much pleasanter to blow the after-dinner trumpet of 
" glory to the present, the past to the dogs," than to 
make feeble efforts to wake the world, and be bitten 
perchance without v/aking it ; but it is impossible to do 
so. The whole question of right or v/rong turns on the 
kind of material that comes to be manufactured, and 
whether the manufacturer can, and does, do the work 
v/ithout waste, honestly, and in all cases. The raw ma- 
terial itself is a very artificial product to begin with, and 
represents faithfully in its fineness or coarseness a long- 
past history. Human minds are not hap-hazard waifs ; 
the infant just born is the heir of congenital conditions 
of good or evil ; and whether those conditions are to be 
passed on better, or worse, is a very vital question. An 
example may make this clearer, and illustrate how com- 
plex the problem is, even at the very beginning, how 
great the divergence can be, and what momentous issues 
depend on meeting the facts fairly, neither shutting the 
eyes to the truth, nor getting rid of it, or seeming to get 
rid of it, by hustling it out of sight. Take the case of 
Mozart as representing typically the perfection of child- 



Mozart mid the tom-to7n player. 147 

life, the best raw material that can come into a trainer's . 
hand. It is possible to imagine exceptional musical 
ability coming into existence in any nation beneath the 
sky. Even the most savage tribe might have, and very 
likely does have, its gifted genius, its greatest master of 
sound, born to it. But what is he? He merely repre- 
sents a new phase of tom-toms, an advance on the rude 
melodies of his fathers. But a Mozart, who at five, and 
seven years of age, can play, and compose the noble and 
refined harmonies of modern music, has born within him 
the living spirit of generations of genius and skill, and 
begins life with natural powers of a different order from 
those of the musical savage. Mozart, and the tom-tom 
player, practically represent the extremes of good and 
bad material between which the work of the practical 
worker lies. As this is the case it is easy to see how 
useless it would be to come forward, and elaborate a 
scheme of education out of the inner consciousness in 
the blissful hallucination that nothing had to be con- 
sidered but what books should be used by classes con- 
sisting of intelligent Mozarts. 

Brain-spinners, who have never taught a child, might 
just as well go to bed and dream, and publish their 
dreams, as prescribe what should be taught, and how, in 
total ignorance of the problems to be solved in teaching 
a child. 

St Augustine hit the point, when he said of teaching, 
"a golden key which does not fit the lock is useless, a 
wooden key, which does, is everything." He might have 
added with advantage, that using one big key for all 
locks is idiotic. The key that fits the lock, whatever 



148 Glitter warned off. 

may be the popular idea, or the action of Government, 
or the talk of philosophers, is the question of the day. 
Those who care for this will not despise the wooden key, 
because it is wooden. The true teacher has to fit him- 
self to the mind he is teaching, not the pupil to fit him- 
self to the teacher, when the question is taken from the 
teacher's point of view. The kind of lock and the 
wooden key that fits come first, according to St Augus- 
tine. 

These pages however commonplace, or unlovely, are, 
as far as they are anything, locksmith's work. Those 
who want gold and glitter must go elsewhere. They are 
addressed to practical workers. For the rest, if any hke 
them not, let Aristotle answer 

aKovaoLTca tQiv 'HcrioSou, 

ovTOS ixkv Trapapiaros os avrbs iravra vorjo-ri, 
eadXbs 5' av KaKeivo^ 6s ev eiirovrt TrtOrjraL, 
OS Be Ke [xtit avrbs voey fxrp-' dWov olkovuv 
kv 6vfJi(^ ^dWijTai 6 5' avr dxp'^i'i^os dv^p. 



CHAPTER II. 

THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING. 

Tlie Raw Material, Structure, TeacJiing. 

The question of the teacher's work at any given 
moment depends entirely on those he has to teach. And 
the capacity of those he has to teach depends, as has 
been shown, on the work of preceding generations, and 
the temper of the times in which the teacher hves. It is 
useless to speculate beforehand. Minds are not like 
books, which remain the same, and once known, are 
always known. They are what they are, not what they 
are imagined to be ; and every mind is somewhat different. 
Apparently, the theory that individual minds have to be 
treated individually, and the mental powers in every case 
developed, has not found favour. No traces at all events 
of such care can be discovered. Examples of splendid 
intellectual power are not wanting. There is abundant 
evidence of the full mind, and of refined learning, and 
habits of work imparted to a chosen few. But no sign 



150 Inherited faihire. 

of the trained mind giving to every one a sense of educated 
power can be seen. The prevaihng feehng of the majority 
undoubtedly is not a feeling of elasticity and success : 
and the majority determine infallibly the atmosphere in 
which men live, and the temper in which the daily life 
moves, and meets the day's demands. Generations which 
get nothing, though much is gone through, are not only 
ignorant ; that is a fault easily remedied, but every suc- 
cessive generation of much enduring failures, or partial 
failures, passes on a more confirmed unreadiness to take 
the trouble of trying to learn. Not ignorance, but un- 
teachableness, is the evil transmitted by bad or imperfect 
measures ; not a mere vacuum of no music, but a tom- 
tom nature, is the inheritance of perpetual tom-toms. 
A most amusing, a most melancholy chapter might be 
•written to prove the tom-tom condition in which the bulk 
of the material first comes to hand, the utter absence of 
any foundation of real interest, or belief, combined with 
complete vegetating power of contented acquiescence in 
thinking and doing nothing. So they begin ; then a large 
proportion goes on, passing a squatter's life, mere vaga- 
bonds, and strangers, in whatever part of the great 
wilderness of knowledge their tattered tent may be at the 
moment pitched. The parish authorities are always at 
them, and always in vain, they end as they began with 
no home in the land, no settled hold of anything belong- 
ing to learning, no love for the pastures up and down 
which they have been hunted without knowing why and 
wherefore. Examples without number might be adduced 
to support and justify the statement that there is no 
feeling for education, no aptitude for it, no behef that 



J 



The cante^'ing whale, 151 

anything worth having can be got, in the boy-material 
that mostly comes under notice. No doubt there is 
a heavy tradition that, like terrier puppies in old days, it 
is the thing for every boy to undergo the process of 
having his ears cropped, to say nothing of another 
appendage; but this fashionable docking is entirely 
different from any conception of real increase in life 
power, and the eager, keen, hunter spirit of Plato's 
Athenian boys. Only two instances however shall be 
cited, as typical of this state of things, and samples of 
drawers full, lest the absurdity of the examples should 
cause the sad truth they bear witness to to be lost sight of, 
and a chorus of laughter titillate the parental world, 
instead of sorrowful misgivings, thoughtful attention, and 
a sitting in sackcloth and ashes, striving for better things. 
The first example is as follows. A class of from 23 
or 24 boys in number, whose ages averaged 15 years, or 
thereabouts, were engaged on a passage in Ovid. The 
boy construing said something about a dolphin, which 
raised suspicion in the master's mind ; who thereupon in 
a quiet voice asked him demurely. How many legs a 
dolphin had ? " Tv/o," was the immediate answer. A 
gentle smile beneath the skin of his face, in spite of the 
questioner's self-command, began involuntarily to twinkle 
through; upon which the boy promptly corrected his 
answer to ''Four." - These novelties of natural history 
roused a thirst for further knowledge, especially as no 
one seemed the least surprised. A few more questions 
revealed, that only one boy in the class knew what 
a whale was. Many did not know whether it was a 
sea, or a land, animal. One intrepid explorer boldly 



I 



152 The carnivorozis stag. 

stated it was a quadruped ; and, what was more, was 
master of the fact that the word " quadruped " meant an 
animal with four legs. This is no extraordinary example. 
It has merely been selected as more likely to come home 
to the general reader than hundreds at hand. There is. 
a grand imaginativeness in the mental picture of a whale 
cantering gaily along in boy-wonder-land. So also of the 
next. A boy of 16 construed a passage, in which a wild 
boar and a stag were mentioned, into most undiluted 
nonsense. The master dropped all research into the 
hopeless morass of the Latin, and grappled with what, 
for want of a better name, must be called the boy's mind, 
with the following result. The questioning was quite 
friendly, and carried on without any accompanying fear 
of penalties. The boy philosopher did not know whether 
the stag chased the wild boar, or the wild boar the stag, 
or the chances of one hunting the other. He did not 
know whether the stag eat the wild boar, or the wild boar 
the stag. He had not the remotest idea, he said, what a 
wild boar was. But he brightened up on the stag, and 
said, he knew it was an animal with horns. On being 
further asked, what he would give a tame stag to eat, if 
he had one, he answered doubtfully, "grass, he thought." 
But on flesh being mildly suggested, said at once, " he 
was not sure that he would not give him flesh." 

The ordinary English boy from well-to-do homes does 
not understand much of the language used in ordinary 
conversation even. But all knowledge comes through 
words. How can unknown words impart knowledge? 
The unknown cannot teach the unknown. To attempt 
it is to set up a manufactory of stupidity. But the schools 



Beau Brummer s cravats. 153 

are only partially to blame for this ignorance. Out of 
what homes have the carnivorous stags, and four-footed 
whales, and English who cannot talk English come? 
If the boys who come to school cannot talk English, and 
the schools start by assuming they can ; and the schools 
are rigidly tied down by public opinion, and law, to 
a fixed Hne of work to be got through in a match against 
time, the schools cannot deal with this question, or teach. 
They are prevented by law, examinations, and public 
opinion. Time is lord of all things, especially in schools. 
What does time demand? If indeed not lessons but 
men's lives are the material dealt with, and each life 
is of priceless value, and twenty must not be spoiled, 
like Beau Brummel's cravats, in making one perfection 
of a neat tie, then the question of time does press 
like a mountain on schools; and spoiled lives must 
continue to be the product of the attempt to make 
education consist in the unknown thrusting in the 
unknown into unwilling receptacles. Yet ignorance 
is the least part of the evil. Not ignorance, however 
great, is the difficulty to be faced; but the nature, the 
dull, contented nature, which is satisfied with dulness, 
which neither wants to know, nor is ashamed of 
not knowing ; the heavy, moveless clay, which is quite 
unresisting, yet hopelessly sticky. But the fathers of 
these boys have been at school. What were the schools, 
which have succeeded in filling England with these 
Mozarts of literature? That they have not done their 
work is clear. Who is in fault ? Can the work be done? Is 
it possible under present conditions to pay attention to the 
mind of each boy ? Are the schools in fault? or the powers 



154 Captains a7^e not ships, 

which control the schools? Public opinion? Market 
price ? Government ? Legislation ? There have been 
something like thirty years of legislation. Has legislation 
cleared or obscured the question ? What great principles 
of school construction have been laid down ? Does any 
one know the cost of teaching any subject well to each 
boy, and not neglecting any one of the many? Has the 
subject of teaching each boy, the possibility of doing so, 
the means necessary, and the cost of the means, come 
into the horizon of discussion ? nay the horizon of specu- 
lation even ? What is the unit, by which cost must be 
calculated ? After thirty years of legislation these simple 
postulates of work, this alphabet of education, are doubt- 
less mere household furniture in every home, common 
property, mottoes on the wall, scrolled over the doors. 
Or is any structure necessary in a school ? Does it not 
take shape as a natural growth ? Yet a natural growth 
has a seed to start from. What is the school seed? 
These are very serious questions, and many more might 
be asked. Grand words from hero-worshipped Head- 
masters no more answer them, than a Captain's seaman- 
ship turns an old tub of a sailing vessel into a firstrate 
ironclad. Talking of truth, and honour, and trust, is one 
thing, and having the structure true, and honourable, and 
trust-deserving, another. The Captain is not the ship. 
The make of the ship, not the Captain, determines 
the kind of manoeuvres it can do, and what can be done 
in it. And the make of a school determines in like 
manner what can be taught, and what training can be 
given. No glorification of canonized Head-masters 
touches the question of carnivorous stags. Solomon 



I 



Firsts second, and last. 155 

himself could not teach four walls, or the boys inside 
them, if wanting individual attention, individual atten- 
tion cannot be given on account of numbers. Each mind 
is different. The degrees of capacity are different. The 
degrees of apathy are different. The causes of the apathy 
are different. Plato's young Athenians are not English 
schoolboys. Nor, it may be retorted, are English school- 
masters Platos. Be it so. That is just the point which 
requires to be driven home. How can English school- 
masters be turned into Platos, in method, at all events ? 
Real teaching is wanted. What then is real teaching ? 
And how can the carnivorous stags be exterminated ? If 
teaching means calling out dorma,nt faculties, and strength- 
ening mind, it is obvious that pumping indiscriminately 
on a class, though the veritable waters of Helicon be 
pumped, is not teaching. Mind is the teacher's subject. 
He must be able to deal with mind. The first thought 
of the teacher must be those he has to teach. The second 
thought must be those he has to teach. The last thought 
must be those he has to teach. What he teaches is not 
his subject a bit more than the medicine a doctor gives 
is the doctor's patient. A teacher's first maxim is, " If 
the boys don't learn it is my fault;" his comforting axiom, 
"The v/orse the material the greater the skill of the 
worker." He addresses himself in every possible way to 
get at the inner life. He tries to find a chink here, to 
scrape open a little rift there, for a ray of light to get in. 
By praise and blame, and skilful application of wits in 
unexpected ways, he endeavours to meet the boy on his 
own ground, beat him there where his own ideas are 
encamped, enlist him, and lead him on to conquest. 



156 Pupils not books. 

The whole secret of teaching lies in one sentence, find in 
the pupil's mind a ttou o-tco, and everything becomes 
possible. It will be observed that from this point of view 
the pupil and the teacher are everything, and that their 
relations to each other decide the whole question. The 
books and the knowledge are nowhere till this fact is 
established. What matters it that the teacher is dispensing 
nectar, if the pupil is chasing carnivorous stags? The 
problem of the present day is a simple one, simply stated, 
without any circumlocution. It is this, how to reach the 
mind of each boy. 



CHAPTER III. 



THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING. 

The LediLrer. 

The teacher's subject, as has been shown, is not 
books, but mind. On the other hand the lecturer's 
subject in the first instance is not mind, but books. 
This distinction is vital, and the most important results 
follow. Broad is the dyke, and deep, that cuts across 
between the teacher and the lecturer, dividing them by 
a bridgeless space. They stand on the same level; at 
a little distance they appear in the same field; to the 
ordinary eye they are engaged in the same work, with 
the same surroundings, and the same object. But they 
are divided for ever in theory, and in practice. 

It has already been shown that the subject of the 
teacher is the mind of the individual ; that his first, 
second, and last thought must be mind, and how to get 
at mind. But the first, second, and last thought of the 



158 The ready-made-clothes shop. 

lecturer is how to get out his book-work in the clearest 
and most presentable form. His books, and the way he 
handles his books must be his subject. This arises from 
the nature of things. The lecturer has to deal with 
knowledge. He is a knowledge-master and must con- 
form himself to the conditions of knowledge. Know- 
ledge demands that the work to be done should be put 
out from beginning to end v/ithout flaw, and with perfect 
skill. To do this implies that the worker uninterrupted 
by any external consideration should do the work him- 
self, shape it, polish it, and with great artistic skill turn 
out a work of art. He addresses a mass. The compo- 
nent parts of his audience, the single minds with their 
difficulties, are nothing to him. He assumes, and is 
justified in assuming, if his lectures are voluntary, that 
the audience are prepared to understand him by previous 
acquirements. The general character of his instruction 
must indeed be adapted to his audience. But for this 
it is enough for him to know their general character. 
Nothing more is required. He is like a ready-made- 
clothes shop. If he wishes to succeed, richness of 
material, and a graceful hitting off the average taste must 
make up for want of individual fit. His knowledge 
must be cut into the most acceptable pattern. This 
requires much command of the book to be communi- 
cated, much tact in the fashioning, and a taking and 
effective style of delivery. But when done it is done. 
The book, and the knowledge, and the skilful narrative 
are the sole business of the lecture. The audience must 
take care of themselves. A good lecturer puts out his 
work wonderfully well, and those who profit by it come 



Lecturing a performance. 159 

already prepared, and adapt themselves to what they 
hear. Is this last line a definition of the English school- 
boy? or of any schoolboy? But it is in this that the 
difference lies between teacher and lecturer, between 
taught and belectured. The teacher makes the taught 
do the v/ork, and occupies himself in showing them how 
to do it, and taking care that they do do it. His work 
is to direct, suggest, question, inspirit; and he adapts 
himself in every possible way to the individual minds, 
never resting till he has made them master of the skill 
required, and seen them become capable of working on 
their own account. The lecturer leaves his audience, 
and they leave him; and he goes his way entirely re- 
gardless of their fate, only concerned with having per- 
formed with credit to himself The distinction is vital. 
Excellence in the one is a complete reversal of excel- 
lence in the other. The lecture is cl6ar cut, logical, 
precise, beautifully connected, yet avoiding all close and 
laborious exactness. Teaching takes any shape what- 
ever, is fragmentary, changing as the difficulties of the 
pupils' minds change, and disregards all precise plan, 
provided that a close, laborious, and exact exercise of 
mind is the result. The lecturer does the work, and 
goes. The teacher makes the pupils work, and stands 
or falls by what they do. 

A most important practical result at once is deve- 
loped from these facts. The number that can be dealt 
with at one sitting is fixed. A teacher can only teach in 
one hour as many as he can make take part personally 
in the work, and question, and look to individually in 
one hour. 



i6o The attdience, the class. 

A lecturer can take with advantage any number 
within pleasant reach of his voice. In fact numbers are 
an advantage to the lecturer. They inspirit him. A 
lecturer lecturing to one is an absurdity. But a teacher 
teaching one may be perfection. A large audience ex- 
cites ambition in the lecturer, and gives an artificial glow 
to the familiar theme. But a large class overwhelms the 
teacher with despair. 

If this is put in a concrete form the effect will be 
manifest at once, and the serious nature of the distinc- 
tion appear. A lecturer can lecture to one hundred, 
two hundred, any reasonable number of hundreds, in one 
hour. They all hear him, and that is all they have to do. 
A teacher can teach twenty-five at the outside in the 
same time. This decides the question of cost. If one 
hundred is taken as a low estimate of a possible audi- 
ence, and twenty-five as the maximum of a class, then 
the cost to each hearer of a lecturer is one quarter the 
cost of a teacher, if both are paid on the same scale per 
head. And a boy in a class must pay four times as 
much for his lesson, as a hearer in a lecture-room. It is 
no wonder that poor teaching gets jostled out of the 
market. Yet if parents took to heart the real manner in 
which the question of cost acts, they would think long 
and well before they gave their verdict. The belectured 
boy, unless prepared, and interested, goes away empty, 
having got nothing. Amongst the average throng of 
unprepared young minds that are annually sent to swell 
the muster-roll of large classes, if ten per cent, really gain 
much, and twenty per cent, gain something, a balance of 
seventy per cent, remains who have gained nothing. 



Dmers and dinner less, i6i 

This seventy per cent, accordingly, who retire from the 
table, dinnerless, have paid for the intellectual dinner of 
the rest. So as a hundred pay, and thirty dine, the 
charge per head can be low. Later on the empty ones 
are returned on hand fit for comparatively little, even if 
they have not been summarily ejected from the school, 
after the fashion of modern legislation. This money 
question underlying the whole question of teaching 
versus pumping is very serious. For nothing which is 
not worked on true principles of trade will last. Mar- 
tyrs, who will work for nothing, cannot be reckoned on 
as part of the negotiable commodities in the market; 
and moreover a system worked by martyrs in the first 
generation generally ends, as has been mentioned before, 
by being worked by cheats in the second. One thing is 
certain, the teacher and the lecturer represent two oppo- 
site poles ; there is an antagonism in principle between 
a subject put forth attractively, where the master does 
the work and the disciple listens, and the problem of 
a dull mind solved, and dormant faculties roused to 
efficient powers, where the disciple does the work, and 
the disciple's mind is the subject, and the teacher is 
a practitioner on mind. Two different kinds of character 
are called into play. The teacher must be full of human 
sympathy, inwardly exhaustless in kindness and patience, 
willing to bear anything but refusal to be taught, and 
fertile in resources even for that. The lecturer must be 
full of book sympathy, and intensely alive to the writings 
he deals with; but he may be intolerant to the last 
degree of slow humanity and blundering helplessness ; 
it is no part of his business to succour the weak. Un- 

T. II 



1 62 Flinging peas, 

happily whenever the start is made from the book sym- 
pathy and the hoards of knowledge, teaching, in its true 
sense, is exterminated. The moment numbers shut off 
attention to individual minds, it is obvious that the 
mind problem is not attended to. This means in school 
classes, that rules, rules, rules, and the fixed tale of 
bricks must be the staple of the work; and whoever 
cannot, or v/iil not, comply, and take in and put out on 
demand the legal quantity, must go; and ought to go, 
for to stay with no power of getting the rule work done 
is wasted time. Nevertheless this means, when trans- 
lated into plain English^ that, vvrhereas a teacher's work 
is to train the dull minds, even more than the quick 
ones, which train themselves, this work of training the 
dull is not done, and not attempted to be done, and the 
failures, which were failures because the work was not 
done, are got rid of; just as an amateur carpenter be- 
ginning flings aside the wood he has spoiled. The low 
class is the teacher's pride, and the pumper's dismay. 
The nauseous demand for higher work, so often reite- 
rated, betrays the poor deluded honour-man whose one 
idea is knowledge ; and who walks into the school, like 
an old farmer's wife into her poultry-yard with her apron 
full of peas, to be flung out indiscriminately, with a 
cheerful consciousness of beneficent superiority, and 
picked up, or — not — as may happen. 

The dull, or closed mind is a very curious exercise of 
skill on the part of the teacher ; but a neglected nuisance 
on the part of the lecturer. Which is it to be ? teaching? 
or lecturing ? boys ? or books ? see ye to it fathers and 
mothers. It concerns you. What becomes of the birds 



Birds that wont feed. 163 

who will not be fed ? or who cannot pick up knowledge 
like peas ? 

No boy ought to leave school untrained. Mind is 
the teacher's subject, and the teacher ought to be able to 
deal with mind. Which is it to be ? the teacher ? or the 
lecturer ? 



CHAPTER IV. 



THE -PRACTICE OF TEACHING. 

Thought-stamps ; not Argument. 

The teacher preparing for his work has passed by ; 
now let his class stand up and give some account of 
themselves. There are four main facts brought out by 
experience in dealing with the young mind. 

First, the reasoning power of the young, the power, 
that is, to follow a logical chain of reasoning, is non- 
existent. 

Secondly, the young have no power of attention. 
Attention has to be learnt as much as any other lesson. 

Thirdly, the memory of the young is very good, if 
they care for what they are doing. 

Fourthly, there is no power in a young boy to master 
a subject thoroughly. 

Thoroughness requires a strength which does not 
exist. These four facts, for facts they are, are the four 
first problems to be dealt with by the teacher. 



I 



Pictorial knowledge. 165 

The complete absence, practically, of the reasoning 
faculty, so far as learning by means of it goes, determines 
at once the whole character of good teaching at the begin- 
ning. There must be simple statements, and simple ex- 
planations. The early stages require the new, ideas and 
facts to be put like little pictures before the pupil, without 
any attempt to show the mechanism, as it were, by which 
the effect is produced. Logical progression is out of the 
horizon. The all-important factor of the mind to be 
taught must be the starting point. If processes are shown, 
it must also be, so to say, pictorially, in some subject 
already very familiar. The inside of common things 
is intensely interesting to the curious child, witness the 
number of toys that have been the victims of scientific 
research, and broken, to find out what was inside. But 
then they were toys, thorough property, entirely in the 
power, manual and mental, of the owners. Wherever 
there is the feeling of thorough property, there is also the 
wish for thorough knowledge, and the child delights in 
having the structure of the familiar thing laid bare. But 
even then, much as they like to know all about what is 
their own, the knowledge is a knowledge by sight, not a 
matter of reasoning. This then is the principle of all 
early work, either eye-sight, or mental sight. Either 
actually show the bit of teaching, which often can be 
done ; or let the bit be a little plain statement, a kind of 
stamp, which the mind can see without trouble. Trouble 
enough will come in due time. This principle requires 
the teacher to lay aside the fascinating shapeliness of a 
clear-cut system, and submit himself to the yoke of the 
boy-mind. Rigid, formulated, square statements, cannot 



1 66 A dull boy s mind a zvise 7nan s problem. 

find their way with their corners into the iittle tortuous 
windings of the little mind, with all its bHnd mazes, 
passages that lead to nothing, obstructions of previous 
ideas, mobs of small idolatries, idolatries of play, idolatries 
of day-dreams, combined with absolute incapacity to 
bear the unyielding thrust of logic in its fine tissues. 
The teacher must indeed have a logical plan of his own, 
which he does not lose sight of ; but the actual teaching 
has to be imparted bit by bit, as the learner is fitted to 
take it, with many illustrations, and digressions, which 
are not digressions, but roundabout ways of arriving at 
points, where the direct path is blocked. A dull boy's 
mind is a wise man's problem. Mind is the teacher's 
real subject; and how to excite thought, and arouse 
interest, without making much demand on the logical 
faculty, the first aspect which the work of mind presents. 
Perhaps, considering what is almost universally done, the 
first rule to be laid down is a prohibition. Never try to 
fill the little mind with lumber, under colour of its being 
of use by and by. Lumber does not excite thought, 
lumber does not interest, lumber does breed disgust; 
nothing should be put into the mind which is not wanted 
immediately, and which is not also the easiest way of 
meeting the want. The pupil ought to be made to feel 
that thought is a pleasure, and a power; and that learning 
means being taught to think by easy steps. For example. 
He knows that the having learnt to read and write has 
opened up to him treasures, which he would not now 
give up, and therefore he can be made to believe that 
the new tasks, however distasteful, are going to do the 
same thing in a still higher degree, and land him in 



Thought not distastefuL 167 

unknown empires. But why should they be so distasteful? 
Thought in its true sense is not distasteful. When mind 
enters into the works of mind, and receives life from them, 
the new life is not distasteful. The whole mighty realm 
of imagination is thought, whether it be the imagination, 
which creates the Midsummer Night's Dream, or the 
imagination, which sets the baby child in the nursery on 
the floor, and surrounds it with a living kingdom in the 
guise of broken toys, and makes it lisp to a much-battered 
doll, "You are the Queen." Imagination is not distaste- 
ful. There are plenty of thought-pictures in common 
things for any one who knows how to paint them, or, 
better still, make his pupils paint them. And thought 
is the beginning, thought the middle, and thought the 
end of a learner's work. Let not the teacher pile in 
lumber that is not thought. The learner can be made to 
see without difficulty that new thoughts, and the power 
of receiving thoughts and thinking thoughts, are a gain 
and a pleasure in the long run, because he has already 
found them to be a pleasure, or ought to have done so. 
The next step is easy. The learner can be made to 
understand the obvious truth, that language, and literature 
are the great exercise ground of thought, and mind; 
inasmuch as all thought passes through language. Words 
are the every-day and all-day messengers of common life, 
as well as the varied and intelligent expression afterwards 
of the thoughts of the greatest thinkers. There is no 
reason in the nature of things why the child in the nursery 
should not understand, aye, and feel gratefully the mean- 
ing of Teaching; and be taught through the familiar 
sights and words the pleasure of being taught, and led on 



1 68 Do-nothing labour. 

to work with interest in collecting new material, and in 
thinking over what has been collected. This truth is not 
impaired by the fact that much has to be taken on trust 
at first, much to be learnt on faith, which cannot be fully 
explained at the time. It only means that there are 
grounds for this faith; that these grounds should be 
made plain; and that as the demands for labour and 
patience increase, the faith should increase in proportion, 
from the sense experienced daily of an increase in power 
and pleasure, which a skilful teacher will unobtrusively 
keep up. There is no more reason in the nature of things 
why a boy should rejoice in the weak and inactive mind, 
than in the weak and inactive body. If bodily training 
consisted in carrying heavy stones from one hole to 
another, and, as fast as they were thrown in, pulling 
them out, and taking them back again, there would be 
no lack of feeble bodies. Every boy would be as weak 
as a resolute evasion of being employed in doing nothing 
laboriously could make him. How much of child labour 
in knowledge, falsely so called, is a doing nothing labori- 
ously, with .much solemn jargon, and much real infliction. 
The simple formula, "give a beginner something to think 
about," sets this all straight at once. Something to think 
about ! This cannot be a sawn-out board of dry know- 
ledge. Something to think about ! This must be an 
object of interest, partly understood therefore, partly new, 
familiar, but unknown. Nature has given this in the 
learner's native language, and its treasures of beautiful 
thought. Whenever the nations believe in the training 
of mind being the first thing, and the heaping up of 
knowledge the second, the language and literature of 



Nahtre first, 77iuseums afterwards. 169 

each nation will be studied first. The mediaeval process 
of self-flagellation will be left off, and work made as easy 
and delightful as possible, with the absolute certainty 
that when the preliminaries are over, the stubborn realities 
of the greater achievements of mind and their demands 
will give plenty of labour, and plenty of pain, if pain 
is wanted. The beginner ought to be made to feel that 
the gain is worth any pain by the time he is called on to 
make the sacrifice. This principle excludes all cut-and- 
dried definitions, packets of rules, and formulated results. 
It requires, if such an illustration may be allowed, that 
the young should learn natural history and botany in the 
woods and fields first, and not be set down in a Museum 
to dried specimens, and stuffed animals, and elaborate 
classification, till they have learnt the value of a Museum, 
and its meaning. 

There is another subject almost as much within reach 
as language, which is entirely neglected as a training 
subject for mind, though equally open to all, which de- 
mands nicety of hand and eye, great mechanical skill, 
and introduces the dullest at once to strange discoveries 
in common things, that greatest point of true Education. 
It is marvellous that the grand training of Drawing has 
never taken its place as a teaching power. The learner 
is met on the very threshold by the truth of truths, that 
he has eyes that see not, and hands which cannot do his 
will. He finds out that the lines go in a way he knov/s 
not, though they are known. He looks at a wall, and 
sees what he sees, but is utterly unable to record what 
he sees ; all is wrong the mome'nt he begins. The very 
chair he sits in is a puzzle of untold difliculty. He is 



1 70 Drawing a great teaching power, 

brought face to face with that grand fact of the wondrous 
perfection of accurate power in the midst of which he 
has moved unknowingly, and he comes in sight of the 
highest truth that man can attain to, a perception of his 
own unconscious ignorance, utter incapacity, and clum- 
siness. A fresh secret leaps out of every leaf, there is 
not a pebble which is not turned into a world. The 
transformation which follows immediately the smallest 
child is made to Draw, and set to observe the what? 
and the why ? in things, and attention turned on to the 
endless discoveries of ignorance which are disclosed in 
this way, is more rapid, and complete perhaps than in 
any other exercise of mind. This is, or may be, the 
beginning. Later on the art of composition, that is, 
of intelligent arrangement of thought, is more effectually 
illustrated by a picture, than in any other way. It is no 
concern of this treatise to glorify the painter's skill ; but 
the neglected world of truest teaching, which is waiting 
to be used whenever Drawing is taught as a matter of 
mind, not of hand, and is recognized as one of the first 
great exercise grounds of mind, does belong to the 
Teacher's province. The impossibility of jumbling ideas 
together in a Drawing without detection in the first place, 
and a detection, which can be made plain to the eye, in 
the second, is a virtue, which would be very valuable in 
much teaching work in language ; and most important of 
all, the one vivid impression with everything leading up 
to it and back from it, which is the life of a picture, is 
the life of a lesson also. But how often a lesson has 
nothing pictorial, firm, or unblurred in it. Many men 
pass their days without ever having composed a lesson in 



The lesson and the picture, 171 

their lives. Their statements are all equally forcible, or 
equally feeble, as the case may be. Faults are knocked 
about at random, as they occur, without the slightest 
attempt to mark some strongly, and to drop others into 
the background. All is on the same level. No definite 
piece of teaching brought out, no high light ; no definite 
style of blunder unobtrusively stamped out. But in 
Drawing the difference between a true composition and 
this chin ese-plate work is seen at once; and the necessity 
for decision and skill in arrangement self-evident. Every 
good Drawing is a model lesson, in which what has to 
be taught is imprinted at once by a single skilful stroke. 
And no one knows the skill which has blended so many 
parts into one thought-stamp, until the confusion of un- 
trained work is seen. There is no work so untrained as 
the attempt of a master to uncoil a chain of reasoning, 
and put it into the boy mind. Long before the end is 
reached the beginning has disappeared. Nothing that 
is not valuable piecemeal is valuable in teaching the 
young. The best teaching will be like St Paul's Epistles, 
where every single verse is powerful and plain, however 
subtle or elaborate the argument of the whole may be. 
Good teaching will at least have each impress powerful 
and plain, and be working secretly towards a given 
end. 

A feeble stroke is useless. Too much giving of rea- 
sons is worse than useless. A Teacher must be content 
to omit much, and not be concerned about the glossiness 
of his work. The mind of a working, vigorous litde boy 
is much Hke his clothes, very untidy, but very service- 
able, entirely regardless of every thing but the object at 



172 Composing lessons. 

the moment. No doubt order and tidiness are part of 
the training; but dress boots won't do for turnip fields, 
or mountains. Strength is needed first. Strong ideas 
are wanted, put forth by an unseen plan. Every good 
teacher will compose his lessons, and compose them on 
this principle. Interest must be excited, faith inspired, 
mind dealt with. 



I 






i 



CHAPTER V. 



THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING. 

Inattention^ Indifference, Sleep. 

The next fact that has to be dealt with is attention. 
Much misapprehension exists on this head. Because 
people are attentive, when strong interest is roused, there 
is a common idea that attention is natural, and inatten- 
tion a culpable fault. 

But the boy mind is much like a frolicking puppy, 
always in motion, restless, but never in the same position 
two minutes together, when really awake. Naturally his 
body partakes of this unsettled character. Attention is 
a lesson to be learned ; and quite as much a matter of 
training as any other lesson. A teacher will be saved 
much useless friction if he acknowledges this, fact, and 
instead of expecting attention, which he will not get, 
starts at once with the intention of teaching it; being 
well assured that it v/ould be just as sensible to look for 
the Latin Grammar to be spun off the reel by the 



174 Leaky dykes. 

light of nature, without book, as for attention to be got 
without training. A teacher will treat this as a lesson, 
and exercise all his skill in teaching it, and be patient 
with beginners, and command it by life, good humour, 
and go. 

It is curious how entirely in most cases the progress 
of the lesson reflects the temper of the master. If this 
is true, it is obvious that the personal power of the 
master in all bits of small discipline and the general 
swing of the class, will decide absolutely in a fair time 
the habits of the class. A sleepy manner, however 
strong the real interest taken by the master may be, pro- 
duces in the taught either laziness and apathy in the 
lazy, or tricks in the puppy section. . It is most disastrous 
in anything belonging to disciphne to overlook beginnings. 
No leak ever broke up a dyke more certainly than trifles 
passed over break ' up the order of a class. There is 
however a worse fault still, a fault which is almost univer- 
sal j this is, to legalise insubordination by having a set of 
small routine punishments, and imposing them regularly. 
This makes a regular crop of the fault; and the fault 
becomes an established institution, and what began as 
a bit of carelessness ends by being a tolerated crime. 
Little breaches of order ought to be met by the personal 
authority of the teacher's words and influence. If that is 
not enough, they should be promptly stamped out by real 
severity. 

Inattention creeps in at another door. The operators 
are apt to forget the class, which is their real work, and 
to be absorbed in the book, and the boy doing it, whilst 
the rest are comparatively disregarded. The rest accord- 



The ope7^ator paid in his own coin. 1 75 

ingly are inattentive, for the operator is teaching them 
inattention by being inattentive to them. They are his 
main care, and not to care for them brings its own 
punishment in not being cared for. First one, then 
another, takes advantage of the absent eye, and disorder 
begins, and in spite of spasmodic severity becomes the 
rule. Instant, watchful, if need be, pitiless repression of 
the first sign of inattention is the only law of discipline. 
Nothing ought to escape a teacher that the boys do, for 
he is there to train the boys in what they do. Querulous 
complaints of disorder, and the inflicting of heavier, and 
heavier punishments, — at intervals, are the sure indica- 
tion of one who forgets his duty to the class, and is 
inattentive to them, whilst at best he mistakes the lesson 
for his subject, and at worst is sleepy, capricious, and 
incapable himself. As mind has to be dealt with mind 
must be there. And however clever the performer may 
be, he might as well stand up, and solemnly set about 
giving a lesson to the clothes of the class hanging round 
the room on pegs, whilst the owners were playing cricket, 
as to the so-called class, if the boys are careless, playing, 
or noisy. Culpable inattention in the boys is above all 
things a master's fault. Able, earnest men, who attend 
to the class, will always find the class attend to them. 

But inattention is not always wilful. There is an 
unconscious kind that is very dangerous, though inoffen- 
sive. Many a good, disap'poiiited boy has been disap- 
pointed, because he has been allowed to blunder on in 
utter inattention when he thought he was at work, and 
no one has ever made plain to him the difference between 
sitting over his books, and an eager, intelligent love for 



176 Pillows, chairs, and learners. 

the work to be done. How to learn ought sometimes to 
be taught, and delusions about work done away with. 
Sleep is sleep, whether the pillow be -<3^schylus, or goose 
feathers; and sitting in the most sacred chair is not 
study; truths lamentably lost sight of by many a meri- 
torious, mistaken student 

The state of mind necessary before anything can be 
done ; the state of mind necessary whilst anything is being 
done will not be left out by any Teacher, who has real- 
ised that his subject is mind. The toiler and moiler 
ought to be plainly told, and told again, and again, the 
real object in view, and the preliminary processes neces- 
sary before any true work is done. Nothing is more 
pitiable than the spectacle of a boy spending hours of 
self-denial, stupefying himself by groaning over tasks un- 
attended to, because he is groaning, and self-tortured; 
when all might be spared, if anyone had ever given him 
a lesson on the subject of his own mind, and shown him 
the real purpose of the work he is supposed to be doing, 
and how surely, and quietly it can be done. Whereas a 
great nightmare is on his soul, an infinity of unattainable 
knowledge fills all space for him. He is like one who 
should sit down, and mourn over the size of the world, as 
a reason for not using the excellent pair of legs nature 
has given him for traversing that portion of it which he 
has to do with. 

Granted however that the teacher is a teacher, and 
that the class knows what it is about, and is not unwil- 
ling, mere arrangement has infinite power for good or 
evil. A class ought to sit, or stand, compactly, under 
the master's eye, so that at a glance he can take in all, 



Inattention shops, attitude. 177 

and they all are in touch with him. The moment that 
from the numbers, or from the structure of the room, the 
master's presence does not pervade the whole body, and 
make itself felt everywhere j if whilst speaking to one he 
is cut off from the many, there may be discipline, if he 
is a man of decision, but there will not be attention. The 
mechanical necessities of attention have not been com- 
plied with ; an unreality, a working falsehood, has got 
into the work, and the work will suffer. For the same 
reason, no boy ought ever to sit with his back to the 
master, unless he is writing ; in which case the paper he 
is writing on, and what he is doing, is in front of the eye. 
Still more important, if possible, is attitude. Attitude 
makes false work, as well as betrays false work. A com- 
petent judge shall tell in a moment by simply looking 
through the window where a class is at work, whether 
good work can be going on there. The attitude of the 
boys will show. For though there can be true outward 
observance in some degree without inward truth, the 
converse is not possible. There cannot be inward reality 
without producing an outside corresponding to it. It is 
a law of nature that the mind acts on the body, and 
makes it follow any real emotion. Everyone knows how 
difficult it is to restrain the outward look of anger, if 
angry; of sorrow, if sorrowful; and so on, through the 
whole range of feeling. But what is the meaning of this 
excepting that any reality within of necessity comes out 
in a corresponding bodily expression; and — that the 
bodily expression does show the absence of any real feel- 
ing, as well as the presence. This is a law of nature. 
It is equally a law of nature that every outward gesture, 

T. 12 



178 Action of body on mind. 

or expression, acts on the mind, and has a tendency to 
produce the inward feeHng. Sir Charles Bell in his book 
on Expression, which every one ought to read, tells us 
" It is a fundamental law of our nature that the mind 
shall have its powers developed through the influence of 
the body," and he goes on to say; " How much influence 
the instrument of expression has in first rousing the mind 
into that state of activity, which we call passion or emo- 
tion, we may learn from the power of the body to control 
these aflections. I have often observed, says Burke, that 
on mimicking the looks and gestures of angry, or placid, 
or frightened, or daring men, I have involuntarily found 
my mind turned to that passion, whose appearance I 
endeavoured to imitate." Here is a fact for considera- 
tion, the outward gesture produced the inward feeling. 
A very simple experiment, so simple as to disgust all who 
want their prophet to come out and make a show, will 
convince anyone of the infinite power of this fact. There 
are things called arm-chairs, an ordinary upholsterer can 
make them. Nevertheless let a healthy person, comfort- 
ably warm, compose himself in mystic fashion in their 
sacred precincts, and shut his eyes, and a very few 
minutes sometimes will convince others, however much 
beyond the reach of conviction he may be himself, of the 
potency of attitude. The various ways in which indolent 
minds maltreat indolent bodies, and are duUified by them 
in revenge, are an approach to this somnolence, and not 
calculated to increase the power of coping with difliculties 
of learning. A Teacher will not neglect this great law 
of nature. Few suspect how much the waters of Helicon 
are contaminated by the slime which oozes in through 



Attend to the body. 179 

this unguarded sluice. Boys are permitted to stand up 
to construe with hand in pocket. And too often the 
slouching attitude, the sprawling, and lolling about, is 
enough to reveal how little is really being done within, 
and alas to prevent more from being done, even though 
the operator may be successful in turning out prize win- 
ners; but as a rule this is not the case. These are the 
quarters from which come complaints of the boys, of 
their being disorderly and inattentive, of their disregard 
for authority, mixed with bewaiHngs of pains taken in 
vain, and querulous talking of throwing pearls before 
swine, varied by constant punishment, and invoking of 
higher authority; when all the time the operator has 
been disregarding laws of nature ; and only had to make 
his class stand upright, take their hands out of their 
pockets, hold up their heads, and comport themselves in 
an intelligent way, like persons eager to learn, instead of 
young neer-do-weels the first Sunday they have escaped 
from the National School. In some instances it is a 
good plan to make the boy called up to construe come 
to a particular place as a kind of rostrum before he 
begins. It rouses attention, and gives an idea of the 
importance of the work. A system of taking places judi- 
ciously worked, and not made too much of, may be very 
useful in the lower classes ; there is a little value in the 
mere fact of being on the move. A better plan still, as 
far as it goes, since it does not take the minds of mas- 
ters, or pupils, off their work, and make the success, or 
failure of individuals so prominent, is the plan of making 
a first class, after the boys have been at work two or 
three weeks, and promoting and degrading those who 



i8o Natures revenge, 

deserve it, giving some privileges to the first class as well 
as the honour of selection. 

Finally there is another most unfailing hot-bed of 
inattention, a perfect invention for growing it, more fer- 
tile even than too great numbers in a class, — the length 
of time spent in school. Pharaoh will have his tale of 
hours. And nature will have her perquisites out of them. 
Let any adult, however practised, however zealous, under 
five and twenty years of age, test himself for just one 
day, by an hour-glass, and try and see how long he can 
continue to keep up his attention at a stretch over the 
acquiring ot new knowledge, and a sad experience will 
teach him, if he faithfully stops his hour-glass the moment 
he relaxes, how ludicrously few are the minutes during 
which he is actually hard at work, compared with the 
time he believed himself to be spending. But there is 
a far more rough and ready, yet sufficient, test of atten- 
tion. Most people hear sermons. A unanimous verdict 
will be given that the mind wanders occasionally even 
during good sermons, eyelids have been known to droop, 
and contemplation to be prodigal of nods, yea there have 
been seen gracious men asleep, whose general appear- 
ance scarcely betokened that ill health or exhaustion 
were the irresistible causes of their slumber. There have 
been dull sermons, and will be again; it will be con- 
fessed that the percentage of actual sleep in a dull ser- 
mon is a very appreciable quantity, a visible gauge of the 
condition of some of the congregation ; whilst who shall 
pretend to calculate the invisible torpor, or wandering of 
mind? But it is worth considering that the dullest ser- 
mon ever preached is as the blast of a trumpet compared 



How to baffle Pharaoh, i8i 

with misunderstood lessons to a heavy, ignorant boy, 
who has no beUef in education, no knowledge of its aims 
or value, no confidence that he can get it eyen if it is 
worth having, and is only alive to the fact that he knows 
nothing, and hates it all. There have been also dull 
operators in school, as v/ell as dull preachers in Church. 
How can attention be secured under such circumstances ? 
Here then is a real problem. There is natural waste' 
also, a kind of leakage always going on, which must be 
taken into account in fixing the times for study. 

The problem is very real. If the times are too long, 
inattention is bred as in a hot-bed. 

If the tim.es are not long enough the idle boys do 
nothing. Time to soak, so to say, as well as time to dip, 
is required. Natural incapacity forbids the crowding 
much into a small space. Strength, and energy, and 
training must be there before this can be done. And 
they are not there; they have, if possible, to be pro- 
duced. The pressure of external opinion, which judges 
by externals, generally demands much too long a period 
of compulsory attendance. This form of difficulty can 
be met sometimes by allowing the class to go out for ten 
minutes in fine weather, and ventilating the room, and 
their brains. Preparation of the lessons out of school, 
or, if in school, in a less formal way, corrects in some 
degree this constraint. If Pharaoh still insists on too 
long school hours, and rehef is impossible in the matter 
of time and place, then graduation of the subjects, be- 
ginning with the hardest, and ending with pleasanter 
tasks, English poetry, for instance, is the only refuge left. 
Indeed this graduation always ought to be pressed into 



l82 



Attention and masters. 



service. Apparently, three quarters of an hour is the 
longest time that an average class can be kept at work 
on the same subject by a master, with advantage. It 
will have been plain from these few remarks, first, that 
attention has to be taught, and does not come by the 
light of nature ; secondly, that there is a common-sense 
science of the physical and mechanical conditions neces- 
sary to secure attention ; and lastly, and m.ost of all, that 
attention rises or falls in the barometer in proportion to 
the master's ability. Inattention is a master's sin. It is 
a weed which above all others grows on badly farmed 
ground. 



CHAPTER VI. 



TKE PRACTICE OF TEACHING. 

Memory. Feed it. 

Memory next claims notice as the most powerful 
quality in the young. Every advantage ought to be 
taken of this to interest them, to fill them with precious 
freightage, and new wonders, and material of the best 
kind. They ought never to be loaded, like the donkey, 
v/ith salt, a heavy weight all along the road, but which 
melts away, and leaves an empty sack the first river that 
has to be crossed. 

By memory is meant that strange carrying power, of 
which all partake, and which some have to a marvellous 
degree, by which the owner receives and stores up, in 
many instances with no effort, whatever comes within 
reach. It is a natural gift, born with the possessor, and 
in no way dependent on his intelligent appreciation in 
the beginning. It is a mere cart power which holds 



184 Memory and recollection. 

whatever is thrown into it, even nonsense which jingles, 
mere sounds which run with any cadence, and in fact is 
the faculty of an elaborate parrot catching sounds, and 
by no means tied down to understanding. 

This early faculty is entirely distinct from the power 
acquired afterwards of fixing in the mind by conscious 
effort, and strong interest, that which is judged worthy of 
being fixed. Memory in this fi.rst sense is an instinct of 
the young, and often passes away in that shape as the 
owner grows older. Whereas the strong impressions, by 
which the attentive mind stamps indelibly what it wishes 
to retain, are the result of an effort; and the necessity 
for that effort, and the power of making it, are the result 
of teaching, and can be definitely taught^; the two are 
distinct. The natural gift is now under consideration. 
And the fact that the young are pre-eminently endowed 
with this natural gift is most important in educating the 
young. It simply amounts to this, that whilst the young 
are almost devoid of any power of connected reasoning, 
they are superlatively endowed with the power of receiv- 
ing and collecting materials. The child has memory in 
childhood, reasoning power in manhood as his main life 
functions ; like the frog, which breathes through gills in 
early life, and attains to lungs in its respectable years of 
discretion. Nature prescribes accordingly that the main 
business of the young is to collect material ; a business 
which the infinite novelty of the new world not a little 
contributes to enliven. This determines the first great 
axiom, or what ought to be the first great axiom of early 
teaching; open Fairyland. Endeavour to delight, in- 
* Dr Pick. 



Throw op 671 Fairyland. 185 

terest, fascinate the child by judiciously supplying melo- 
dious sounds, splendid imagery, touching narratives, 
noble adventure, noble endurance, noble sufferings. 
There is a fearful theory born and bred in the quagmires 
of Marsh-dunceland, that nothing is learning, unless it is 
disagreeable, or worth having, unless it is difficult. As if 
the value of a building consisted in the number of the 
bricks which built it. Thus the high beauty of the 
Waverley novels, the winsome charm of ballads, the 
music of lyric poetry, the glorious metrical romances of 
Scott, the holy organ tones of immortal song, are not 
considered to be training because they delight. But the 
world is large enough to tire the strongest. The more 
difficulties are removed, the farther the wayfarer can get. 
There is no fear that a too easy progress will ever do 
away with the need of labour. The path wants to be 
smoothed not roughened. Would that a law could be 
passed, that no child should be taught any language but 
its own, as a study, before ten years old. But then 
another law would have to be passed, that no teacher 
should teach, who could not make the pupils frame their 
own grammar rules, by leading them to see that every 
necessity of grammar is but common sense applied to 
words. And a third lav/ would be wanted to manu- 
facture a supply of such teachers at once. Many other 
legislative feats would also be required before the possi- 
bility of doing work so intelligent could begin. Here 
too, as in so many other cases, the finding easier ways of 
doing work only means enabling a far higher standard to 
be reached in the infinity of work to be done. Even if 
it were otherwise, there is no danger that the path shall 



1 86 Natures laws. 

be all flowers, and the demand on work cease for many a 
year; and no danger that an idle swallowing of pleasant 
surface literature, which is no more sustenance than 
tartlets are beef, should take the place of honest food. 
The risks are all the other way; either lumps of rules to 
be of use by and by, or a thin paring of Manuals, is the 
diet with which the stomachs of the young are loaded. 
By all means let there be work. Careful selection of 
what has to be taken in and remembered is all that is 
pleaded for. Neither is the fact lost sight of that there 
is a grand capacity in the youthful memory of accumu- 
lating with little effort mere sounds, without understand- 
ing. This prescribes that the most useful drudgery 
should be got through early. And it may fairly be said, 
that if under present circumstances this was interpreted 
to mean that an absolutely infallible accuracy of declen- 
sions and conjugations was acquired, years of after toil 
would be saved, and in many instances lifelong in- 
capacity be turned into healthy activity of mind. No 
tongue can tell the hopeless state of muddle which is 
produced by scrambling into the word-quagmire without 
a single bit of solid knowledge to rest the sole of the foot 
on. Nature therefore in giving the young a youthful 
memory lays down its own laws, if any one would heed 
them. First fill the great receptacle with everything that 
inspirits, and interests, all treasures of melodious verse, 
all thrilling narrative of daring deeds, all simple pathos 
of touching endurance, mingled with the weird, wild 
truths of the wonders of the animal and physical world. 
And secondly, all drudgery necessary to be known, 
which is not better learned in the practising it, word- 



Bad repetition, 187 

forms, and everything belonging to word-forms and their 
meaning, may well be stored up at once. But rules, and 
technical terms, should be avoided as much as possible. 
They pass for understanding without being understood; 
and not unfrequently are the cause of all the entangle- 
ment of after years ; when the stock names are answered 
to the stock questions; and oftentimes neither teacher 
nor learner have the least idea of the real purport of the 
words they use so glibly. It is easy to learn books of 
rules, and never apply them. It is easy to answer them 
correctly and be quite ignorant why the answer is correct. 
Rules are the refuge of the brainless; and the instrument 
of those who have to produce some show without the 
time or machinery necessary for true work. 

This is bad enough, but there is worse behind. Bad 
repetition. Bad repetition is grown as a regular crop by 
a well-calculated system of cultivation in many instances. 
Nothing is more common than the setting lessons too 
long to be thoroughly learnt in the time allowed. This is 
worse than lost time. Experience shows that two dif- 
ferent kinds of maimed power result from this, each ac- 
cording to the kind of victim. The slow, clumsy learner 
settles down into a heavy persistency that he cannot 
learn, and that it is no use trying to do so. Which is 
indeed only too true as long as a dull, unhelping hand 
above forces the yoke down on a dull, repugnant mind 
below. This process turns out the unbelievers in cul- 
ture, the carnivorous stags. But the quick, clever wits 
acquire a fatal facility of quickly catching up the task at 
the time, and forgetting it as quickly, to the permanent 
injury of steady, retentive grasp. 



1 88 Lessons in inaccuracy. 

But there is worse still behind. Many operators 
allow nonsense to be repeated; in other words, they first 
permit the pupil to neglect the great fact that the sense 
is the strongest hook to fasten the words on to the mind, 
and also the only thing worth fastening on; and second- 
ly, let him go off with innumerable errors fixed in his 
mind instead of knowledge, as far as anything is fixed. 
Inaccuracy in fact is taught as a lesson. 

How few apparently have any idea of instructing their 
pupils how to learn. The metre is neglected. In other 
words, that rhythmical measure, which makes the melody 
of poetry, and causes it to be easier to learn than prose, 
is allowed to go for nothing. Here again not mere for- 
getfulness is the evil, but inaccuracy is taught as a lesson. 

Then even the correct words are mumbled in such a 
fashion that it matters little whether they are correct or 
not; all the life is gone out of them. Indifference is 
taught as a lesson. 

Yet these points are points of teaching, and belong 
to a teacher. Forgetfulness would be a light evil; but 
unmetrical, slipshod nonsense, full of words mangled, 
mispronounced, ungrammatical, mere dead lumps, shape- 
less, and vile, all this is poured into the memory, to re- 
appear again, and again, any number of times, in idiotic 
mistakes, and to form a ruinous habit of never having 
accurate knowledge in anything. No! forgetfulness is a 
blessing, when inaccuracy is taught as a lesson. Happy 
would many teachers be, if the pupils they receive did 
forget. Forgetfulness is a blessing when inaccuracy is 
taught as a lesson, as it must be when too much is 
required to be learnt. 



Thorottghness a fallacy. 189 

The last point of those mentioned as belonging to 
the minds to be dealt with is the demand for thorough- 
ness. This properly falls under the main head of the 
powers of reasoning, and how far they are to be found in 
the young; but is so pretentious, and so frequently put 
forward, that a little special notice given to it will not be 
out of place. There is something so wise, so unanswer- 
able, in the modest, yet firm requirement that the lessons 
must be done thoroughly, and a boy not advance till he 
has mastered what he is doing, that the request commands 
assent at once; there is also so real a truth underlying 
the dictum that the fallacy involved in it easily escapes 
notice. The fallacy is, — // cminot be doiie. There is 
no power in the minds of the young to master a sub- 
ject thoroughly. Thorough mastery is the perfection of 
trained skill, and it is absurd to demand the perfection 
of trained skill from the untrained beginner. The map- 
work which transfers to the mind a complete plan of the 
country belongs to men; it is enough, and more than 
enough, if the boy can find his way about fairly well, and 
appreciate the landscape. Any attempt to linger too 
long over the same work will only end in weariness, and 
deadening the interest. Words and work, when stale, 
become to the young mere empty sounds, meaningless 
rote-work. There must be change. Looseness indeed 
is fatal. What is known ought to be known with exact- 
ness; but a gap is no harm, unless it is in the middle of 
the main highway. Monotony is the greatest enemy a 
teacher has to deal with. There is much danger, where 
all is new, as it is with beginners, lest a boy find a dead 
levtl without landmarks to guide. Where all is new, all 



IQO Move oil and up. 

cannot be mastered, and in the first confusion, unless he 
moves on, there is nothing to show what is intended to 
be done, or where he is to go. This perplexity is much 
increased very often by indiscriminate fault finding, 
which instead of marking a distinct narrow path through 
the thicket, mixes up great and little, stumbling in the 
way, and wandering off the way, errors of ignorance, and 
errors of laziness, non-work and bad work, mental 
peccadilloes, and mental crimes, in one inextricable 
tangle from which there is no escape, because there is no 
clear idea whatever given to the boy mind of anything. 
Whereas though thoroughness is impossible, and there is 
far too much novelty to be mapped out, there is no 
impossibility whatever in marking, pioneer fashion, a 
track on which a boy shall feel perfectly safe. This 
feeHng of perfect safety is the one thing no bad teacher 
dreams of giving, and which every good teacher makes 
it the first business of his life to try to impart. Again, 
many difficulties in learning cannot be mastered by 
standing still over them ; they can only be got rid of by 
movem.ent. They are like what happens to the traveller. 
In the valley, on the low ground, the fog reigns, and as 
long as the traveller stops in the valley, will continue to 
reign, not to be wrestled with, or overcom.e; but let him 
move up, and move up, and by degrees mere movement 
brings him into a clearer atmosphere, the mist vanishes 
away, and at the top of the hill the whole great land- 
scape in all its beauty is clear, and the little hollows with 
their fog are mere specks, even if they still are there. 
So it is with the boy mind, never let it stay too long in 
the hollows. Movement is absolutely necessary; at the 



Index Exptirgatortus. 191 

same time the back work ought to be incessantly kept 
up by a small portion of time being devoted weekly to 
foundation work. And the teachers throughout a School 
ought to have an Index Expurgatorius of faults to be 
stamped out; each class keeping in communication with 
the one above, and below it, so as to waste no labour, 
and to be aware what the idler boys ought to know. 
Extreme accuracy in the structure of common sentences, 
and the forms of common words, ought to be universal. 
No good teacher allows any shortcoming here. But 
thoroughness in the ordinary sense of the word is im- 
possible by the laws of nature. 



CHAPTER VII. 



PRACTICE OF TEACHING. 



The Blurred Chro7nograpJi. Sham Mistakes. Snores. 
Lunatic Mistakes. No Answers. 

The actual teaching comes next. No words can 
exaggerate the importance of the first rule to be laid 
down. 

The observance of it would revolutionise the whole 
world of tuition. 

It is so simple that it can be observed. 

So simple, that few observe it. 

So simple, that those who want talk, and will do any- 
thing, and undergo anything rather than think, and act, 
will scorn to observe it. 

Many boys, who all their lives long know nothing 
because of early tangle, would know. 

All would save half their time. 

What then is this talisman, this Columbus's ^gg., this 
simple magic and magic simplicity, this Aladdin's lamp, 



The blurred Ckromograpk. 193 

which is to whisk everything into place, and create half a 
Hfetime for all? — Articulation. — Nothing more than a 
rigid, absolute unfailing exacting of articulate speech, 
and the pronouncing the final syllable of each word 
firmly, distinctly, and unmistakeably. 

The full force of this statement is not seen at once. 
It has been proved that accuracy is the first, and main 
object of training, both the power of accurate observa- 
tion, and the power of reproducing accurately what has 
been observed. It has been proved also that one of the 
main advantages of an unspoken language as an instru- 
ment of training consists in the number of inflected 
forms, the changes, that is, in the final syllables. The 
orderly multitude of small word-labels, all calling for in- 
telligent observation, is that property of language which 
makes language in the first instance such a valuable drill- 
master, apart from any other consideration. Every one 
has seen an imperfect chromograph. Let us suppose for 
a moment a chromograph of a book in which every final 
syllable was left out, or blurred, and this too in a foreign 
language. What would be the value of that copy to a 
learner with its pages full of words cut in half? Pre- 
cisely the same value, that inarticulately spoken lessons 
are to the miserable victim, who is permitted to drop, or 
blur his final syllables. Add to this that the human 
chromograph possesses the unenviable faculty of filling 
in all the blurred or dropped portions incorrectly at will, 
and so of keeping and cherishing not a merciful blank, 
but a most cruel torment of endless mistakes. And all 
this ruinous downward training is the necessary result of 
inarticulate speech, and the not sounding the final 

T. 13 



194 ' Sloppy minds, 

syllables. A habit is formed of confusion and indecision. 
Confusion and indecision breed constant disappointment, 
in a hard-working boy especially; inaccuracy in time 
settles down into a conviction that nothing is certain oi 
fixed, or, at least, that he cannot by any possibility arrive 
at it. And this in later life leads to all those sloppy 
theories and careless confident judgments which fill the 
air; and finally ends in utter and general unbelief in any 
one being really master of his subject; with the fitting 
corollary, that if no one is master of his subject, any one 
is at liberty to express his own views on it; and the 
judgment of the skilled workman is of no more account 
than the babble of the after-dinner talker. Nothing is a 
more striking sign of the rotten state of education than 
the absolute non-existence of any respect for the judg- 
ment of the skilled workman in his own fine, whatever 
that line may be. Only lawyers are exempt from this 
irony of being handled by the amateur ! The evil of in- 
articulate speech has much to do with this, by destroying 
in the great majority the sense of precision. 

But to return to the learner at his task. The pupil 
in language might be defined in his early stages as one 
whose business it is to stamp on his memory the last 
syllable of words. Therefore he is allowed never to pro- 
nounce one of them distinctly. The blurred chromo- 
graph sprawls over his whole mental tablet, with an ever 
increasing family of mistakes, till at last in hopeless be- 
wilderment he dubs himself utterly stupid, gives up the 
struggle and leaves off trying to get on, accusing his poor 
calumniated mind, when all the time the only culprit is 
his tongue, and the teacher, who has not taught him how 



^Snores. Sham 7nistakes, 195 

to use his tongue properly. If articulate speech is really 
taught, and the accurate attention necessary for articulate 
speech is the habit of the room, then the next step is 
natural and easy. Accuracy demands that the right 
thing should be known, and, if known, said at once. 
Therefore — never allow a boy to correct himself. That 
is, inflict at once whatever penalty the mistake carries 
with it without fail; and then, and not till then, make the 
offender mend his ways. Or, at least, impose silence 
until your questions have exposed the blunder. There is 
a vast army of mistakes, which are no mistakes at all in 
the sense of being wrong mistaken for right. They are 
merely the loose snores of the unwaked mind; when the 
construer, or answerer, knows perfectly well, as well as 
his master does, the actual bit of knowledge to be pro- 
duced, but has been permitted again, and again, to spit 
out what came uppermost, and — to correct it. He has 
not made an intelligent mistake, he has not even made an 
idle, unintelligent mistake, he has simply snored, emitted 
an unthought of sound out of a drowsy cavern of non- 
life. It is no mistake at all ; as he proves the next mo- 
ment, and very often will admit, by correcting it prompt- 
ly and with ease. No correction ought ever to be 
allowed to avert blame, or penalty. This rule does not 
interfere with that most useful of all minor inflictions, the 
pushing an idle, careless boy through the bit he is mal- 
treating, forcing him to flounder on, to sprawl about, to 
take every word, and render each, as he takes them, 
however absurdly, in all the hideous deformity of words 
unknown, grammar defied, and sense nowhere; and then 
when he has finished, reading out the result. There is 

13—2 



196 Guesses, snap shots. 

no worse fault in teacher or taught than not keeping 
close to the work, and working with certainty. Real 
mistakes are one thing. Sham mistakes are another. 
And the learners ought to have the distinction sharply 
and strongly cut across their minds. A boy ought to be 
made to see always that what he can do he shall do. 
Faults of ignorance are very real, and faults of idleness 
are very real, but at any given moment there may be 
great difficulty, nay, impossibility, of judging whether 
any blame or punishment is deserved by the guilty, but 
unfortunate creature, who has made them. But sham 
mistakes admit of no such doubt; they are unpardon- 
able; and if every teacher agreed in never allowing this 
preventable crime; never allowing a correction; never 
allowing these senseless snores to pass; a great revolu- 
tion would be effected. It is not the knowledge of the 
miserable Tense, or Case, that is the question, but the 
slackness of mind that is so deadly, the trained activity 
that is at stake. Sham mistakes should be exterminated 
promptly. They are mere vacuity, total absence of 
training and thought. 

There are many varieties of the sham mistake. 

Guessing pure and simple is akin to this absence of 
thought. The snorer and the guesser are twins. "Both 
thrive under bad teaching." "Common mistakes," 
writes one, "are those due to wild guessing. A boy 
takes a shot, as the question goes by, on the chance of 
getting up. Hence a verb may have twenty different 
Perfects and Supines given it as it goes down the class." 
What a graphic picture! Twenty boys with necks out- 
stretched, eagerly gasping at their chances of making 



Lunatic mistakes. 197 

mistakes — in order to be promoted, and — the serene 
power in the clouds above permitting it. This is only 
too faithful a sketch of what is done, and ought not to be 
done. The artist has depicted with fidelity, from the 
life, the native simplicity of English teaching. But the 
guesser can easily be brought to book. Let him be told 
to look steadily at the questioner, and be asked, what 
boy, or tree, or picture, or whatever may be there, inside 
or outside the room, is behind his back; and be bantered 
when he cannot tell, and be bid guess, and laughed at 
for not guessing, and when he has been made sufficiently 
uncomfortable, be shown how utterly idiotic it is to make 
a guess at what he knows nothing about, with the range 
of the whole world for his guesses to disport in, when he 
cannot even guess what is close to him, and one of the 
few things that can be near him. 

Next there is a distinct class of sham mistakes which 
may be called lunatic mistakes. The following dialogue 
will explain what is meant. A bit of stray nonsense is 
turned loose by a boy. 

Master. Are you deaf? 

Boy. No. 

M. Are you bUnd ? 

B. No. 

M. An idiot ? 

B. I don't think so. 

M. Just imagine then that we two are out walking, 
and meet a dog. I say " look at that calf." What do 
you do ? 

B. Say it's a dog, it isn't a calf. 

M. What ! contradict the Headmaster ? 



tqS The Lttnatic asylum, 

B. A dog's a dog. I must, because it is a dog. 

M. What ! venture to know better than the Head- 
master ? 
i; i, B. I can't help it. It is a dog. 

M. Well. To take another case, say 2x2 = 5. 

B. But it doesn't. 

M. What ! contradicting again ? 

B. Yes, of course, I must. 

M. Suppose I persist in saying it is 5 ? 

B. You would be mad. 

M. What ! you able to judge that I was mad ? 

B. Why ! yes. 

M. Well, let's move on. Genitor is the genitive case. 
■ B. But it isn't. 

M. Contradicting the Headmaster again ? 

B. I can't help it. 

M. Well then, 2x2 = 5 ^^^ Genitor the Genitive case 
are as much signs of madness in me and you as calling a 
dog a calf? 

B. Yes, certainly they are. 

M. All I can say is we have made a most interesting 

discovery this morning. This is a most flourishing 

Lunatic Asylum. Not a day passes in which dogs and 

calves are not jumbled in beautiful confusion and perfect 

indifference as to which, by you and your companions. 

Many of these things you know quite as well as I do, if 

you would but stick to what you know. It is not true 

! : that you are ignorant. You have already a considerable 

j amount of real, solid knowledge under your feet, on 

! which you can stand firmly, and advance firmly, without 

sticking in the mud, or tumbling into ditches ! 



Qttagmire got rid of, 199 

In this way that most important point may be esta- 
blished in a boy's mind that he does know something, 
and can gain positive knowledge. He can be made to 
feel in himself that his mind can deal with work ; that it 
is not all quagmire, floating, unstable, treacherous, un- 
savoury stench, hateful in his nostrils, and useless. It is 
impossible to overrate the importance of giving confi- 
dence. Very much of what is called idleness, and in- 
attention, is only utter bewilderment, produced by the 
unsystematic way in which the swarm of novelties has 
been thrust on the beginner ; and the unsystematic way 
in which technical Terms, Tense, Mood, Case, &c. which 
he does not know the meaning of, have been crammed 
into him; and the unsystematic v*^ay in which rules, 
which are pure Chinese to him, have been substituted 
for teaching : and the unsystematic w^ay in which praise 
and blame, alike unintelligible, have been poured over 
him; till drenched, eyes and nose full, blinking and 
dazed, he is left the fortunate owner of a few answers by 
rote to the more familiar questions as the reward for 
hours of disgust and toil. 

As a further corrective to this drenching process, a 
boy ought never to be permitted to answer any question 
but the one he is asked. 

E.g. if a boy says vicerunt, and the master asks, What 
did you say ? the boy must be made to answer vicerunt, 
and not allowed to correct it to vicerunt. This necessi- 
tates too, that a master should be very careful what he 
does ask, and should keep watch upon himself as well 
as over his pupils. 

The inflexible rigidity of words when once written 



200 ~ Rigidity of words. 

should be impressed on learners. This it is which makes 
mistakes lunatic. Whilst on the other hand, the almost 
infinite variety of ways in which thought can be clothed 
in words without greatly altering the sense tends to make a 
beginner confound the two, and play tricks with the words, 
which when once put out are inflexible. Because the 
translation may be very different in construction and yet 
right, they assume that the original words may be turned 
topsy-turvy with impunity. This is a very dangerous 
snare. No beginner ought ever to be allowed to give 
a rendering however good, unless he has first given the 
literal version, and kept to the grammatical shape of the 
original, however un-English it may be. And no master 
ought ever to be deluded into giving the boys better 
words, until he is sure that they know the exact sense 
and the literal rendering. Otherwise all the wild vagaries 
of guessing, and snoring, and lunatic mistakes, are simply 
bred, and cultivated as a natural growth from such 
planting. 

In like manner, for it is part of the same aimless 
straggling, no commoner fault occurs than the no answer 
at all, e.g. the master asks "What case is tempora?" 
The ordinary boy as likely as not says, " It is a noun." 
Very true, but that is no answer. It cannot be too 
sternly impressed on boys that there are only two kinds 
of answers, a right answer, and a wrong answer. The 
no-answer plague is always breaking out, and furnishes 
a very good test of the kind of teaching that is going on. 
Yet it is very difficult even for a good teacher to get rid 
of it, unless there is much vigilance on all sides, and 
careful explanation of why things are wrong, and what is 



Elaborate anarchy. 201 

being aimed at. As long as hazy ideas of knowledge, 
and accumulation, and the shop full, rule the world, so 
long it is vain to expect boys or teachers to escape from 
these epidemics. Probably, much of this will appear 
childish, much unpractical, to readers, who would in- 
finitely iprefer a finer and more intellectual brain-spun 
web. They will say to themselves, This is. nonsense, 
these things do not occur, or rarely; and if they do, a 
few days will stamp them out. What bad teachers are 
supposed, and what absurdly bad pupils ! Thirty years 
of practical experience of all kinds enable one to lay 
down that this is not childish, absurd, or overdrawn, but 
very sober, everyday fact. Every day is increasing in- 
stead of diminishing the evil. If the teachers are bad, 
and the pupils are bad, what will they be fifty, or a hun- 
dred years hence, when the present elaborate anarchy 
has matured its weeds ? Thirty years ago every one did 
what was right in his own eyes, there was wrong-doing 
on all sides, but nothing w^as fixed. There was possi- 
bility of reform. Since then Jupiter has sent us down a 
Pandora, and missed Hope out of her box \ now we sin 
by law, and boast as we rattle our chains. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING. 

Rim the Goose down. 

The questions hitherto discussed have belonged 
pretty equally to teacher and taught ; and pertain to the 
outward form and manner of working. But there are a 
number of things also belonging to the form of the work 
which exclusively belong in the first instance to the 
masters and teachers and only reach the taught through 
them. 

A Teacher, as has been mentioned earlier, ought to 
make a definite scheme in his own mind, and enter it in 
his private memorandum book; according to which he 
works day by day, and keeps to the path, never losing 
sight of the track. If this is not done he will wander at 
random at the beck of every new difficulty, and rush off 
anywhere as the mistakes of the day blindly occur, and 
attract his attention. And his class will rush off in like 



Rttn the goose down. 203 

manner, scattering in brainless confusion. Many a 
Master runs about mentally just as if he was trying to 
catch geese on a common. There is the flock assembled 
in a reasonably compact body. He makes a dash into 
the middle, of course missing his victim; and off they go 
in all directions, he after them, first chasing one, then 
another, till the flock has ceased to be a flock, and he, 
all out of breath, is no longer within reach of any of 
them. Run one goose quietly into a corner, run him 
down, is the first rule of catching geese; and a good rule 
too, whether in class room, or on common. Every fault 
must not be chased. A very few days will show what 
elementary mistakes of ignorance, or carelessness, the 
boys are in the habit of making. Let them be noted, 
and a gradual scale privately written down, beginning 
with the most elementary. As soon as this is done the 
Teacher is in a position to formally open the campaign. 
The lessons proceed with varied fortune day by day; but 
the Teacher merely corrects all other mistakes, and lays 
down the law himself briefly, not spending time on any 
of them, still less wasting good wrath, but he fastens on 
any of the two or three faults he is determined to get rid 
of. He hammers at them during part of every lesson, 
and gives serious notice to nothing else in the way of 
mistakes, or bad work. Like the great Alexander, "He 
fights his battles over again, and thrice he slays the 
slain." For they need it, they have an awkward trick 
however often their throats are cut of reappearing 
again. 

The boys in this way learn the distinction between 
serious faults, and faults of pardonable ignorance; the 



204 Classification of faults. 

briar-patch begins to have a path in it. They learn to see 
that amidst the apparently infinite throng of novelties 
and difliculties they are only required to take them one 
by one. Like the never-to-be-forgotten story of the dis- 
contented clock, they find out that however many millions 
of seconds have to be ticked, only one is wanted at a 
time, and with this discovery much of the terror of work 
vanishes. Obviously the same plan must be pursued in 
what has to be hammered in, as well as in what has to 
be hammered out. In fact the one properly done is the 
other. Extend this principle, and suppose that the 
Teachers throughout the school are working in unison on 
this plan, and, well! a new creation will have begun. 
But even in the case of the single Teacher, however 
unsupported on either side, this simple process abso- 
lutely alters the whole cHmate, lifts the fog off the work, 
sweeps clear the foggy mind, and the foggy field of labour 
equally. Nothing conduces to clearness and accuracy so 
much as a careful classification of fault-finding. The 
simple rule, "fix on your goose, and run him down," is 
of marvellous practical power. 

Again, much help can be given towards simplifying 
work, and lessening the apparent infinity of it. In that 
way also the goose can be run down. The fact that 
between eighty and ninety per cent, of the words in an 
ordinary Latin author are found in English has already 
been mentioned. But what a fact that is! To say 
nothing of the use of thus knowing your own language 
(and who can tell how much language-power w^ould be 
lost if this was given up), a complete and absolute trans- 
formation takes place in the work itself; the learner, 



The word-army y its uniforms. 205 

instead of being landed in a foreign country, helpless, 
and penniless, amongst strangers, finds himself a kind of 
detective policeman being trained to find out old friends 
in disguise. Much interest can be roused in this way, at 
the same time that the endless labour shrinks into very 
modest dimensions. It is well also to reduce the sen- 
tence difficulty in the same manner to its due proportions 
by showing, that every sentence in the world from the 
first spoken words to the last must have the same 
skeleton of Subject and Predicate, Noun and Verb, 
with their belongings. This cannot change, but must 
always be there in one shape or another. So that if a 
boy is taught to grasp firmly the main bone, and put the 
sentence together bit by bit, instead of going at it all at 
once, the goOse is run down here too. 

There is a still more remarkable simplification even 
than this, which a Teacher can draw attention to. The 
vast number of words frighten the learner. But let no 
time be lost in making a boy see that the more there are 
the easier it is to know their duties. To take an illustra- 
tion. The words are as an army, divided into regiments. 
The meaning of each word is the soldier's name, but the 
badges produced by inflexion are the uniform of each 
regiment. The more men in a regiment, the easier to 
recollect their uniform. In an army of 100,000 men it 
would be a great feat for a commander, or any one, to 
know all their names; in like manner to know the 
. meaning of every word in the language under treatment 
is hard. But then they are not wanted to be known all 
at once, and this fact should be made plain. On the 
other hand, the uniform seen once is lightly forgotten; 



2o6 Picking up dropped stitches. 

seen ten times, it has more chance of being remembered; 
seen ten thousand times no one can help knowing it. 
But this is true in the word-army ; the more verbs there 
are conjugated hke amo, the easier it is for anyone to 
remember words conjugated like amo^ that is, if he ever 
really knew amo. Alas, a sad experience proves that this 
preliminary step is very often not taken, and that in the 
bustle, confusion, and press of this non-teaching genera- 
tion the whole creaky cranky factory-chimney of tumble- 
down knowledge owes its utter want of stability in a 
great degree to the very simple fact of being founded on 
a sand-heap, of nothing ever having been really learned, 
no, not even the parrot work done in good style. When 
at a later period this is discovered, hopeless as it seems 
at first sight, and in some measure is, yet there is a 
partial remedy. Teachers often err from doing nothing, 
unless they can do it in a regular way, with much ex- 
penditure of time. Very often much can be done, and 
very little time expended. Five minutes given each 
lesson time to picking up dropped stitches will effect 
wonders. A little special attention during preparation 
time in pointing out to a rickety boy the particular points 
in the lesson he should pay most attention to is another 
great ixieans of under-pinning the superstructure. But 
above all adapting the exercises in composition to the 
defects to be corrected in a boy, works powerfully 
towards pulhng the pieces together, and making some- 
thing like order in the mind. 

The same policy can be pursued in a more general 
way. Every good Teacher after he has spent the regu- 
lation time in doing the regulation lesson, hearing the 



Non-official work, 207 

construing, and questioning the grammar in and out of 
the class, will from time to time spend the last five 
minutes, or so, in telling the class himself, whilst they 
hsten, such information, grammatical, or other, which he 
thinks likely to be most effective. This gives every 
Teacher in a right way, and on a definite plan, the oppor- 
tunity of throwing some of his own life into the work 
going on, and casting a gleam of light, yea of very sun- 
shine, on to the heaviest ploughed field of stick-in-the- 
mud clay. He can make a great man a living presence, 
or a daring deed breathe fire, or the dim battles of kites 
and crows, as it were, lose their vague unreality, and step 
out bold and free again, man struggling with man, and 
life and death, the life and death of men and nations 
hanging on the issue. This kind of*non-official work 
again enables a Teacher to illustrate all the work done in 
the strange language, by the familiar examples of our 
own tongue; and thus connect both the meaning of the 
words and the structure of the sentences with daily life. 
He explains why the languages seem to difter, and what 
is the loss or gain in English as compared with Latin or 
Greek. Living interest is thrown into the language 
lesson by this, and the dullest can be made to see that 
he is not engaged in a disgusting, nor unprofitable study, 
but that it is worth his while to do it, though he may find 
it difficult. 

Following this same track, the Teacher throughout 
every class in the school ought once a week to read and 
explain to his class such an author as they can follow, be 
it English, or Latin, or Greek, according to their ca- 
pacity. This is calculated to give a taste for literature, 



2o8 Weekly lectures. 

and to provide a good deal of material at a small ex- 
penditure of time. At all events it breaks the chains of 
necessary routine, and lets a master loose, if he has any- 
real feeling or life in him, to cultivate in some degree 
what he likes best, and bring it in as part of his school 
work. This can be a source of as much fresh life to him 
as to his class, and may be made a most real link between 
the teacher and the taught. Again nothing is more felt 
in the present day, the moment any attempt is made to 
train each boy, be he clever or stupid, than the ignorance 
that is disclosed. No sooner does a search begin into 
the boys' minds, than carnivorous stags, cantering whales, 
and four-legged dolphins are found rampaging in all 
directions; and the daily tasks, with the tale of bricks 
rigidly demanded by Pharaoh, bring no hope of anything 
better. They simply leave the whole matter of ignorance 
in common objects on one side, absolutely untouched. 
This is a very baffling difficulty. Yet if during one Term 
in the year, one afternoon a week is set apart for a Lecture 
to the whole school on any subject whatever worth lec- 
turing on, much general knowledge of common but 
unknown things can be given, grand battues of car- 
nivorous stags, and other such game, take place, interest 
be excited, and freshness poured into the school routine. 
Not the least valuable part of this plan is the advantage 
it is to the Masters themselves. Has any one of them a 
Hobby, a favourite pursuit, he is able to bring it out, 
and air it before an appreciative audience, to exhibit 
himself as a human being with human sympathies, and 
not merely a mummified paste of Greek and Latin 
verbs. Lecturers and able men not on the staff of the 



Lectures. 209 

school can also be called in in a natural way to help the 
work, and the sphere of power available very much 
enlarged in consequence. All this belongs to masters, 
and is their work. A Teacher is not a Teacher who 
neglects these various forms of training life. 



14 



CHAPTER IX. 



THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING. 

Playing with the hat upside down. 

The boys do not know how to set about learning, 
they ought to be taught. This teaching cannot be 
given through the medium of the unknown. It will 
be acknowledged that the power to observe a simple 
thing, note the actual facts first, and then return the 
plain answers which the actual facts give out, or suggest, 
is the very beginning of mental training. For a plain 
answer to a plain question means a plain view of 
a fact seen by the mind. It is the business of 
teaching to give this plain view. For learning is not 
necessarily the same as being taught; any more than 
losing your way is the same as getting quickly to your 
journey's end. Learning may mean getting knowledge 
anyhow; whereas being taught means applying mind 
with skill, and understanding how to apply mind. There 



Observe, picture^ answer. 2 1 1 

is as definite a machinery for arriving at right answers, as 
there is for building a house. But the boys do not know 
this; they neither observe, nor picture, nor answer. 
That is, they do not know the process by which it is 
done; and piUng in new difficulties (what is called 
learning is very often this, and nothing more), naturally 
does not help them. They ought to be taught. It is 
the beginning of true knowledge to know how to learn. 
It is not the intention of this treatise to give technical 
instruction, but only to suggest ways of working. Never- 
theless in this instance ways of working can scarcely be 
suggested without giving a shght sketch and examples in 
outline of what is meant. Let the teacher, for instance, 
of an ordinary class ask the boys to give an account of 
any well-known object, say, an apple. What's an apple? 
Minutes on minutes will be spent before any reasonable 
description of it will be given. Nevertheless however 
different the powers of the boys may be for putting into 
words a really vivid and accurate account of an apple, 
there is a most definite machinery for enabling the mind 
to set about answering rightly, which every boy in the 
class ought at once to put in action. This is given more 
at length in the Schoolboys' Chapter; it will be sufficient 
to observe here that the moment the question is asked 
every boy ought to picture to himself the thing men- 
tioned in as many aspects as possible ; to have it actually 
before his eye, if he can, and examine it; if he cannot, to 
see it in his mind's eye, really see it, take each part, one 
by one, compare it with the things most like it, and then 
note the peculiar facts which make it different from every- 
thing else. But there will not be a single boy out of 

14 — 2 



212 The machinery of answers. 

hundreds, who may be questioned in this way, who has 
ever had this quiet bit of teaching given him; which is 
mere machinery, the machinery of every right answer in 
the world, and quite as mechanical an instrument of 
mind for playing the mind game, as a bat is for playing 
cricket, and quite as independent of the powers of the 
player. It has nothing to do with the strength, or weak- 
ness, ignorance, or knowledge of the boys, it simply has 
to do with the external fact of their using their instrument 
in the right way, or not. It is impossible to lay too 
much stress on the machinery process by which every 
question in the world that is rightly answered is brought 
to the right answer, consciously or unconsciously. Can 
a teacher be a teacher who does not teach this ? 

To take a second example somewhat more complex 
than the apple ! "The sower went forth to sow his 
seed." If a really intehigent answer is to be given as to 
the meaning of the word "seed" under such circum- 
stances, the process is, first to picture in the mind a 
seedsman's shop with all its various seeds, none better to 
the eye than another, hard dry facts all of them, and to 
contrast it with the summer garden, where every flower 
and plant declare vv^hat they are, self-revealed. The 
main distinctions of the seed stand out at once. Next 
the seed must be pictured in the ground, all its hard dry 
nature vanishing, it is full of new movement, roots pene- 
trating in subtle, tender shapes of change, and as they 
change, drawing the secret powers of the ground into 
fresh vitality, the seed thus growing with a growth of its 
own, and so on. All this kind of truth and power of 
answer proceed to a very great extent by rule, the very 



Sense determines construction. 213 

simple rule of at once picturing the object named, con- 
trasting it with its nearest neighbours, and noting the 
peculiarities, which present themselves as things seen, 
rather than as researches of thought. 

To apply this to words. What is the construction of 
the word "when" we will ask. This is only another 
form of asking, what is the real meaning of the word 
"when"? The meaning of the word "when" can only 
be discovered by framing sentences to show its meaning. 
A little trouble will make it clear that the word " when " 
in such a sentence as, " when the end has come, all is 
over," means, " the moment the end has come all is 
over " ; and again, in the sentence, " when he was in 
India he hunted," that the word " when " means, " at 
various uncertain times." Nothing can be more different 
than these two meanings; and accordingly the construc- 
tions used will be very different in every language in 
which shades of mood are marked. Whenever the word 
"when" means the exact moment, an Indicative or 
Fact-mood must be used ; and whenever " when " means 
a floating moment, the Conjunctive or Thought-mood 
must be used. But the finding out the meaning of 
"when" proceeds by rule, the very simple rule of at once 
picturing to the mind the two kinds of sentences by 
which the two kinds of meaning are made to stand out 
in visible relief. Again, exactly the same rule is appli- 
cable to innumerable sentences, and difhculties of 
sentence structure. For example, "would old age be 
less burdensome if they were passing their eight hun- 
dredth year, rather tha?i their eightieth^ What is the 
construction of the end of the sentence ? The moment 



214 Examining nothing. 

it is filled in the construction is evident, viz. *' less bur- 
densome than it would be, if they were passing their 
eightieth year." Or again, let the sentence in Shakespeare 
be taken, " If it were farther off I'll pluck it down." 
There can be much confusion in getting an account of 
this sentence, which presents no difficulty at all, as soon 
as the suppressed clauses are filled in, viz. " If it were 
farther off, / should pluck it douni^ and however far off it 
is, I will pluck it down." Sight, so to say, supplies the 
place of thought, as soon as a few plain instructions are 
given as to how to learn. The fact is, it is impossible to 
examine and report on — nothing : and until attention is 
drawn to this, much time is wasted in examining and 
reporting on — nothing. The beginner has no definite 
object before his mind's eye, and till he is taught the plain 
common-sense rule that he must have a definite object 
before liim, and is shown how to have a definite object 
before him, he has not learnt how to set about his work. 

Lastly, let a narrative be taken, and subjected to the 
same treatment, in order to show how the principle 
should be appHed. Probably history does not furnish 
any better known or more touching picture than the 
raising of the daughter of Jairus. Now the machinery 
of the narrative, viewed as a subject of study, is twofold. 
I St, there are the main pictorial facts, and their transla- 
tion into modern life and practice ; 2ndly, there are the 
minor pictorial facts, and their translation. The main 
pictorial facts are as follows : 

I. The hot Eastern sun shining on the sea shore 
with its open space, and room for the great multitude to 
stand round our Lord. 



The machinery of narrative, 2 1 5 

2. The crowd of fishermen, townspeople, and strangers 
at the Httle sea-port. 

3. Our Lord teaching all these people, who were 
eager to hear Him. 

4. The principal man of the place in great sorrow 
interrupting this popular meeting. 

5. Our Lord at once for an act of mercy leaving 
the shore, breaking off His important work, and in spite 
of the heat, and the crowd, going into the narrow close 
streets of the town. 

6. The crowd following, much jostled in the narrow 
streets, so thronged that they could not help pushing, 
but so respectful that the poor invalid woman was able 
to get through them, and reach the Lord. 

7. The poor, pale sufferer coming up. 

8. The delay, and the father's anxiety, and the im- 
patience and curiosity of the crowd. 

9. The fine house of Jairus, the crowd forced to 
wait outside, the mourners within, and their noise, and 
the chamber of death, and the solemn restoration from 
the dead. 

These are the main pictorial facts which a class 
ought to see. Then translated into modern life they 
suggest of themselves excitement that calls itself reli, 
gious j curiosity of all kinds, but outwardly religious also : 
the followers who think themselves doing a favour by 
following ; apparent zeal, real inconvenience, mixed mo- 
tives, people judging for good or evil, the spectators and 
their feelings, with all the busy self-importance both of 
those who join, and those who don't join in the move- 
ment; and a thousand images of disturbance, and cha- 



2 1 6 translating facts, 

racter, round a religious centre, but far from religious, as 
well as the deep central truth of Christ present, and of 
life in the great sorrow of the father. 

Then the minor facts are 

I St. The delay and its incidents. 

2ndly. The mourners, and the scene in, and round 
the house. 

3rdly. The request of the father to the Lord " to 
come and lay His hands on the child," and the idea of 
the woman, that it was necessary to touch Him. 

4thly. The value of interruptions. 

There is no need of dwelling on these and like facts, 
or even translating them into modern life, enough has 
been shown as a sample, yet it may be worth while 
drawing attention, as a bit of pictorial teaching, to the 
entirely inadequate, not to say wrong views, of Jairus and 
the woman with regard to the Lord's Person and Power, 
which our Lord at once accepts, and acts on; whilst 
thousands of Christians spend their whole lives in 
wrangling over, upholding, or rebuking, imperfect views 
of doctrine or sacraments, and sometimes furiously deny 
all salvation to those who think too much or too little of 
the touch, and the hem of the garment 

This 'however is an example of the machinery of 
teaching, and is not intended to go into minute detail, 
but only to show in an ordinary narrative what machinery 
process has to be set going consciously or unconsciously, 
consciously however if there is any teaching, in order to 
present the subject in such a manner as may bring out 
its real knowledge. 

Years of useless toil might be saved if the learners 



Answered hit not learnt. 217 

only knew how to set about their work. Many other 
devices to make learning skilful and effective will occur 
to the practical teacher, but, as this is not a teacher's 
manual, it is sufficient to point the way. What things 
the attention ought to be fixed on, and in what way, what 
to forget, and what to remember, unobtrusive peculiari- 
ties that require notice, obtrusive excellences that stick 
of themselves, these, and many like instructions, which 
experience suggests, can shorten labour, and cause time 
to be employed to the best advantage. But even to 
draw attention to the science of learning, and the intelli- 
gent skill, that can exist, and may be imparted, in the 
process of setting to work intelligently will be a won- 
drous advance. As yet the boy world, at all events, 
knows nothing of it. 

Again, there is another aspect of the not-having- 
been-taught-to-learn question. No one, who has not 
examined his own class on the work of the past term, 
and had continued, aye, long-continued experience, 
could possibly believe, that a teacher might spend weeks 
and weeks in laying down a few principles of work, and 
questioning in and out of the boys a few elementary 
beginnings of intelligent treatment of sentences, and — 
have those questions answered, — and yet at the end find 
that no single boy had paid any real attention; and that 
the work had all to be done over again. If this is the 
case, as it is, with the most carefully worked-out plan, 
what happens when there is no plan at all, and a mere 
farmer's-wife scattering represents the work of the 
operator, and a punishment lottery the condition of the 
boys? The fact is, the sole idea of work that a great 



2 1 8 The meaning of teaching unknown. 

many good boys have is the filling the knowledge shop ; 
and the work they do themselves is their only idea of 
the process. It never enters their minds that the teacher 
is there not to correct mistakes, hear lessons, and show 
them word-tricks, and examples of successful work, but 
to point out the way in which they ought to prepare 
their minds for doing any work at all. And as this never 
enters their minds, they naturally reject it even when it 
is done, and like a bad player of a famiHar game, are 
only conscious of their misses and hits, and superbly 
blind to the wrong attitude, and the clumsy position, 
which the scientific player knows will leave them compa- 
rative failures to the end of time. The art of learning 
has no existence for them, and they cannot see that they 
ought to readjust their crooked, selfwilled mental pos- 
tures at the teacher's word; that is not their idea of being 
taught, and they cannot bring themselves to receive it. 
They will not take it. This is a very serious evil. Bad 
work is one thing. But working in the wrong way is 
another. Every teacher, who is a teacher, ought to draw 
a strong distinction between faults of ignorance, which 
may be pardonable, and faults of refusing to be taught, 
and persisting in doing things the wrong way in spite 
of teaching. A sharp, unmistakeable line ought to be 
drawn between the two. The class ought never to be 
able to confound for one moment the not doing what 
they can do, and are shown how to do daily, with any 
mistake however gross and startling, which is of ignorance 
however culpable. But the misfortune is, the mis- 
takes are gross and startling, they get up and hit the 
master as it were in the face, whilst the refusing to be 



Play with the bat ttpside down. 219 

taught is silent, and a planless master does not observe it 
at all, and accordingly it often escapes scot-free. 

Nevertheless working in the wrong way is playing the 
game with the position wrong, cricket with the bat held 
upside down, no play at all — and never will be play. 
Bad work is clumsy cricket, which may improve in time. 
The fact that there is a right way and a no-way, ought to 
pervade the whole school life from end to end always. 
Every teacher ought to know how he is teaching, and 
how his neighbours are teaching, and never permit play 
with the bat upside down. Some examples wall illustrate 
this, and mark the difference between bad v/ork, and the 
wrong way. 

When a Repetition lesson has to be said, a boy who 
cannot say it, and stops, and requires prompting, does 
bad work j and it ought to be dealt with as bad work. 
But if he goes on regardless of sense, violates the metre, 
repeats words that are non-existent, or mispronounced, 
or mangled, he is not working in the right way, his 
bat is upside down, he is not playing the game, and 
at that rate never will play the game. Perhaps the 
commonest fault of this kind is for a boy calmly to 
get up, and proceed to construe undiluted nonsense. 
This is generally treated as not knowing the lesson, and 
punished accordingly. But in essence, it has nothing to 
do with not knowing the lesson. Not knowing the les- 
son is ignorance, idle ignorance perhaps; but this un- 
blushing outpour of nonsense is being a fool, a very 
different matter. The man of Thessaly, who was so 
wondrous wise, apparently did not know his way, but 
that was no excuse for his jumping into a bramble bush 



220 The boy of Thessaly. 

and scratching out both his eyes. That was being a 
fool. It was a waste of time, even if he knew that he 
could scratch them in again. But the boy of Thessaly, 
though quite as ready to plunge into any number of 
quickset hedges, does not scratch his eyes in again, but 
only blinds himself the more. This folly, unblushing, 
and common as it is, is not because the boys are fools, 
or shameless, but bears witness to their never having 
been taught that thought is the first thing, thought the 
second thing, thought the third thing to be learnt. It 
bears witness to heaps of knowledge having been pre- 
sented to them to collect, however dead the lump might 
be j it bears witness to no one having stamped on their 
minds the distinction between bad play, and playing 
with the bat upside down. 

Another common example of the total absence of 
mind, and the not knowing how to learn, because of the 
knowledge-lump theory, is this. 

When something more than usually silly has been 
written, or said, the culprit quite unabashed defends his 
outrage by the portentous plea, "I found it in the dic- 
tionary." What a frightful revelation of incapacity ! and 
alas ! of never having been taught. The poor victim 
betrays that instead of looking on his work as a wrestling 
ground to win sense in, and working by the sense, strug- 
gling, if it is a struggle, into the meaning of the passage, 
his only conception is a hunt for words quite uncon- 
nected with thought, or sense. It has not dawned on 
him that ordinary life and the faculties by which he 
knows a cow from a horse have anything to do with what 
he is about ; or that the great writings, which have come 



Shut doors ^ false labels. 221 

down some thousands of years to us, have anything to 
do with readable matter. " I found it in the diction- 
ary!" The words are only made to be declined, and 
conjugated ; and the whole duty of boy is summed up in 
the magic formula, " I found it in the dictionary." The 
knowledge-lump heresy is at the bottom of this. But 
brainless work oilght to be shamed even more than 
brainless idleness. Brainless idleness has probably played 
a game when he ought to have worked, and has got 
something for his time ; but brainless work, poor lunatic, 
has been occupied in burying his mind under heaps of 
rubbish, which he piles up laboriously, instead of clearing 
it away. 

Another most unsuspected form of nonsense, perhaps 
the most deadly of all, arises from the use of technical 
terms, tense, number, case, mood, &c. Technical terms, 
when worked up to, thoroughly understood, and con- 
stantly kept fresh, are most useful in moderation, but 
when merely given as names to beginners, most perni- 
cious. They are generally used for years without the 
least idea of their real meaning, and are taught and ac- 
cepted as satisfactory answers by masters who know half 
their meaning, when the boy answering, who does not 
know their meaning at all, might just as well for all pur- 
poses of mind have called out abracadabra. They pre- 
tend to be knowledge, and are like shut doors proudly 
labelled " Museum," which if any daring explorer opens, 
he finds behind nothing but cobwebs and dust, and the 
door-keeper asleep with the key in his pocket. It is 
a strange comment on the absence of reference to mind 
in dealing with the young, that grammar, which is only 



22 2 English or Chinese. 

intelligent common sense applied to fix common talk, 
bristles with technical terms, and arbitrary rules ; whereas 
all the ordinary structure of a sentence, and the reasons 
for each bit, can easily be questioned out of very young 
children without any book at all by a good questioner ; 
and they can be made to frame the rules for themselves, 
and be their own grammarians. 

After what has been said the worst fault of all those 
which the modern teacher has to meet is no longer in- 
credible. It is a fault, which pervades the highest as 
well as the lowest class. 

It is almost impossible to get the learners to take the 
EngHsh they ha\e to deal with, and in any way attempt 
to get at its real meaning. The actual sense of their 
own language is utterly uncared for; nay, nothing is 
resisted so obstinately as the effort to make them grapple 
with the common meaning of common English sentences, 
which they are required to translate into Latin. If any- 
thing was wanted to prove the total absence of even 
beginning to apply mind in many, who have attained to 
considerable proficiency in rotework and practice, this 
refusal to get below the surface of their own language 
sufficiently to understand its real meaning would more 
than establish the painful truth. A few examples shall 
be quoted to explain what is meant by this, otherwise no 
one would comprehend the actual vacuum that has to 
be constantly taken account of. They are not quoted to 
raise a laugh, but as melancholy proof of the total ab- 
sence of right ideas how to work, and desperate resist- 
ance to being put in the right way. 



Idiotic genius. 223 

A piece of poetry on Hellas contained the line, 
"Her airs have tinged thy dusky cheek." 
A boy of 18 rendered it 

" Helladis heredes palida illius ora colorant." . 

What must have been the habitual void of all intelligent 
training, which could allow such inanity. The well- 
known version of condimenta for the Seasons belongs to 
this category, being begotten of " I found it in the dic- 
tionary" and disregard of the English. 
The well-known line of Longfellow, 

" But has one empty chair," 

after passing through the cavity where a boy of 17 kept 
what he called his brain, reappeared as 

"Qui non jejunum prope sedile tenet." 

Whilst the equally wrong, but less producible mistakes 
of not finding out, whether such an expression as " The 
expedition sailed " means " the ships " or the " sailors," 
or, " the explorers " or " the army" simply swarm. These 
illustrations, and any number might be supplied, reveal 
a far more serious state of things than mere ignorance. 
It is clear that the absence of any idea of sense in the 
work to be done is an imported evil. It is not natural 
for the young to imagine, when they are in places of 
teaching, to which they are sent from home for the pur- 
pose of being taught, that all is nonsense, and that it is 
not their business to learn to use sense intelligently, or 
a teacher's business to show them how to do so. This 
is the result of artificial causes ; and is not produced in 
one generation. The fact is plain. If challenged it can 



224 Unbelief in training, 

be proved by endless examples, coming from all manner 
of different quarters, and extending over years of expe- 
rience. But no one will challenge it who has attempted 
to teach each boy, and noted the state of things as a 
matter of serious thought, and not from the purely ridi- 
culous side. 

The ordinary schoolboy has no conception of coming 
to school to learn the right way of employing sense. The 
idea of intelligent mind being the subject of all school 
work is banished from school. It is not in the school 
horizon. 

The daily work of every school furnishes abundant 
proof of this absence of 'mind, and mind training, and 
the waste of life consequent on it. 

Ignoratnce is natural, but unbelief in training is a cul- 
tivated crop. Some of the reasons have been suggested. 

rd 5' d'XXa ci'yth, /Sous kirl 'yKwacrrj fieyas 
^ejSriKev, oIkos 8' avrbs ei (pdo^yriv XdjSoL 
GacpearaT civ X^^eceu, cos eKuiu eyo) 
ixadovaiv avdia kov [xadovai \r}dofx,aL. 

A schoolmaster has a prescriptive right, readily ac- 
corded him by the scornful, to be a pedant, and quote 
Greek. 



CHAPTER X. 

THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING. 

Quis custodiat ipsos custodes ? 

Nothing has been said about the Masters. 

The writer is a Master, and knows their difficulties 
too well. 

No scientific man has ever yet been found to dissect 
himself. 

But as long as Teaching is impossible there can be 
no Teachers. 



15 



CHAPTER XL 



THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING. 

Thought governs Words. 

A FEW words on the actual work done in the upper 
Schools may not be out of place. If there was a rigid rail- 
way of right with lines laid down, as there is in mathema- 
tics and in every scientific subject which has advanced 
beyond the range of the prophetic faculty, nothing would 
require to be said, as the manner in which it was taught 
would be the only question. But there is no such 
rigidity in language and literature. Language is the 
expression of thought, and however rigid the words once 
written, or spoken are, and indeed then they are fixity 
itself, thought can be expressed in ten thousand ways, 
and there is infinite choice even in the same language as 
to how it shall be expressed in any given instance. As 
soon as two languages are taken into consideration, or 
more, a completely new set of conditions is introduced, 



The chisel mid the axe, 227 

and new forms of difficulty arise, according to the char- 
acter of the languages which are the practice ground of 
training. A language with many subtle shades of mean- 
ing denoted by many slight changes of word-form will 
naturally be full of such subtleties ; whereas a language 
with no such power of expressing subtle meaning by in- 
flexion will as far as possible get rid of them. What is 
to be done by teacher and learner, when they are brought 
face to face with the fact that the same thought is put 
out in a very different way, whilst nevertheless it is neces- 
sary to show that in each language the way is the right 
way ? If a literal version is given, then it is not English. 
If a literal version is not given, the Latin sentence is 
quite changed. Is there no clue? no principle which 
will always act in spite of the diversity ? or is all chance 
and knack ? How can the different instruments be made 
to do the same work ? For the instruments are as differ- 
ent as a chisel and an axe. The first great point to observe 
is, that the thought governs the expression, and causes cer- 
tain words to be used in a certain way; and that the 
words do not govern the thought. Perhaps nothing in 
all the Teaching world has been so fatally untrue as the 
treating the words of the great writers as if they decided 
the sense, instead of looking at the thought to be ex- 
pressed, and seeing that the thought decides what words 
are used. Grammarians have dealt with language as if 
it was a game of chess, in which the words were the 
pieces, and every piece had a given function, and the 
pieces made the game, according as a skilful player 
moved them by rule. Whereas language is a game 
of life, in which thought, that is, living power, takes 

15—2 



2 28 Thought commands words. 

shape in words, chooses such words as give the shape 
required, and then sends them into the battle-field, in 
well-disciplined companies to obey orders, and Avheel and 
charge in disciplined ranks indeed, but in a thousand 
evolutions as the commander commands. The chess 
theory, in which the words are masters, is stereotyped in 
the most erroneous term that was ever invented, that one 
word governs another. This marvellous bit of Topsy- 
turvy, has done more to turn language teaching topsy- 
turvy than anything else in the world ; and introduces 
inextricable confusion into the language world. As long 
as one word governs another, and the words are lords 
paramount, there is no escape from the dilemma men- 
tioned above of two languages expressing the same 
thought, each in its own way, differently. But the mo- 
ment the thought is accepted as the commander in chief,' 
then it becomes plain that the thought in each instance 
selects an appropriate expression, and when the cause is 
the same, the same appropriate expression always; and 
the reason why it does so is known, and if any deviation 
is necessary, that is known also, and can be managed. 
To proceed then to the work. 

It falls naturally under three heads : 

How to Construe, 

How to Translate, 

How to do original Composition. 
How to Construe needs little to be said about it; 
Construing, strictly so called, requires the learner to show 
that he knows the exact sense, and proper grammatical 
construction of each word in the language he is constru- 
ing from, and demands rigid accuracy, not literary skill. 



Construing and translation. 229 

Translation divides itself naturally into two kinds ; 
first, Translation from another language into English; 
secondly, Translation from English into another language, 
whether in prose or verse. 

A strong and well-defined distinction ought to be 
drawn between Translation and Construing, though there 
is much in common. A Translator has to show that he 
is master of the two languages he is dealing with, and 
not a learner of one only ; and that he can on principle 
render the one into the other as a first-rate modern writer 
would write it, giving intentionally and consciously the 
exact counterpart in each instance, however different the 
actual words or constructions may be. No boy ought 
ever to be allowed to translate who cannot first construe. 
But a little translation should be done in every class of 
the School. 

In Translation into English there are three main 
paths which can be intelligently followed by a master of 
language. 

First, there are Parallel constructions; by which is 
meant all instances where one language invariably, or 
nearly invariably, employs one construction in a given 
sense, and another language another, e.g., 

Si comes exstincti manes sequerere mariti 
Esset dux facti Laodamia tui. 

If you followed — Perfect Indicative, 

Laodamia would be — Perfect Conjunctive. 
These two constructions being in parallel use for the 
Imperfects, which never occur in EngHsh Literature. 

Or again, Kayoi fiaOovo-' eAry^a, 

And I heard and was silent. 



230 Analogous, corresponding. 

Versibus propositis, pronuntiabam, 
I selected lines, and spoke them. 
Secondly, there are Analogous expressions, e.g., 
"pares cum paribus," "birds of a feather." 
"dypt'oi;? a'tya?," " a wild-goose chase," 
and a number of words and expressions which grow out 
of different habits, e.g., " Secunda castra," " the second 
day's march." 

Thirdly, there are Corresponding expressions, as the 
use of adjectives and adverbs in English for compound 
prepositions in Greek or Latin, e.g., 

^^rrjs €vvoLa<5 Siajnapreti/, " tO entirely lose." 
" perdiscendum jus civile," "we must thoroughly 
Farn." 
. The use of Substantives for Verbs, e.g., 

" OVK alaxpov cos ywatfct, yevvala XaKelv," 
"as well befits a noble lady's lips ." 
" exsedificare," " finish the whole building. " 
" Impulsa cupressus Euro," " beneath the stroke." 
"In sleep," "dormiens," in haste, etc., with all ex- 
pressions of this kind in English, w^hich in Greek or 
Latin become participles or adjectives, are examples of 
this. 

Nothing is more constant or more important than the 
frequent use of the strong substantive in English for the 
strong verb in Greek or Latin. 

Again Moods and Tenses in Greek and Latin must 
frequently be rendered by an adjective, adverb, or peri- 
phrasis, in Enghsh, e.g., 

€7reju,7re, he continued sending, 
or, he often sent, 



Counterparts. 231 

or, he sent many, 

or, he sent at that time, 
cKOiXve, he tried to prevent. 
The context must decide in each instance what the 
rendering must be. And both Teacher and learner must 
remember that there are some moods, and tenses, the 
latter especially, which are never found in English in the 
mood and tense shape. But these few hints will have 
shown that a master of language has a perfectly sure and 
scientific system to go by, and is quite at home in these 
variations. A good Translation is not a matter of happy 
chance, but however beautiful it may be proceeds by 
well-known laws. The best translation is the most com- 
plete rendering of the sense into simple and perfect 
English with the least possible change. A good transla- 
tion is the most complete rendering of the sense into 
simple and perfect English, without contradicting any 
idiom of Tense, or Mood, in the original. 

Eastly, there are varieties of arrangement and sen- 
tence shape, which may be called Counterparts in lan- 
guage : as in English the omission of many connecting 
particles, where the more exact Greek or Latin puts 
them ; the putting in many connecting particles, where 
Greek and Latin use tenses, relatives, etc. ; the breaking 
up the long Greek or Latin sentence into short sentences 
for the same reason. All these and like changes the 
intelligent Translator, who is master of both languages, 
observes intentionally; an unintelligent Translator does 
occasionally by habit. It is well to remember that a 
sentence, which is perfectly correct and idiomatic if used 
once, may become no language at all, if its structure is 



232 The learner s object. 

continued ten times following, because another language 
continues it ten times following. 

Every good Translator will take the thought of the 
passage, disconnect it from the grammatical structure, 
and try how a first-rate writer would put the thought. This 
will very often give the true rendering, and preserve all 
the sense in such a way as to show clearly that the Trans- 
lator knows the structure, though he has not followed it. 

In school work it is well to remember that the learner's 
first object in an examination is to show his knowledge 
of Greek, or Latin ; therefore in translating out of those 
languages into English, if he is obliged to sacrifice any- 
thing he must sacrifice the English, rather than fail to 
show that he is master of the Greek. 

Notes taken in school should be very sparingly al- 
lowed ; a note book is not attention, neither is it a boy's 
mind. 

A few words on Translating from English into Latin 
or Greek may be useful. 

First, if the learner has really been in the habit of 
Translating Greek and Latin, then the EngUsh words 
will suggest and remind him of the Greek and Latin 
words for which he has used them. If he has only con- 
strued, or he has never used the words found in English 
literature, excepting by accident, he will have no words 
to remind him of Greek or Latin. 

In Composition, intelligent thought is the object 
aimed at. 

Most mistakes in rendering from English into another 
language arise from having no real understanding of the 
English. 



How to translate. 233 

Boys make their efforts a foolish struggle with words. 
What word can I get ? not — what is the best way of 
putting the sense ? is their starting point. This leads to 
nothing. Thoughtful understanding the sense is the true 
start. A boy is first required to show he is not a fool, 
a very different thing from whining out that he is not 
a poet. 

Intelligent thought is shown first, by a thorough mas- 
tery of the true sense and spirit of the passage. It is 
a good practice to learn by heart the passage to be 
translated. A Teacher will point out shades of meaning, 
the appropriateness of epithets, the proportion of the 
ideas, and all other things which go to make a passage 
an harmonious whole, according as these requirements 
are violated by mistakes. 

Diction and Vocabulary are got by thinking of Eng- 
lish synonyms, and putting the sentence into different 
shapes. 

True work is done not by hunting for words, and 
torturing them into place, but by changing the structure, 
e.g.^ by turning the subject into the predicate; the epi- 
thets into subjects; object into subject; substantives, 
adjectives, and adverbs, into the relative clauses, which 
they really are; and framing rapidly new combinations 
when one will not do, e.g., '"Tis a merry world," the 
world smiles with merriment, with pleasure, with sweet 
hope, with delight, etc. Delight rules the world, people, 
hearts, etc. Hearts glow with joy, etc. A complete 
mastery of the sense does the work. 

The genius of languages should be pointed out, e.g., 
the tendency of Latin and Greek to use verbs, tenses, 



2 34 ^^^^ requirements of Composition. 

and moods, because the language expresses them grace- 
fully; the tendency of English to suppress them, or use 
substantives, adjectives, or adverbs, in their place, be- 
cause the English language has no graceful forms in this 
direction. In fact, all work is determined by the tools ; 
a man with a chisel, and a man with an axe, will produce 
different works of art. 

Remember, that the object of a Translator into Eng- 
lish is in the first instance to show his knowledge of the 
language he is translating, therefore if anything must be 
sacrificed he must sacrifice elegance to accuracy. Whilst 
the object of a Translator into Latin or Greek is to show 
his knowledge of the language he is translating into, 
therefore he must sacrifice accurate rendering to elegance, 
if he must sacrifice. 

The use of books of Composition is noxious. Each 
master ought to cook the exercise according to the di- 
gestion of his class, and not serve out regulation rations 
of salt beef to invalids. Then also he knows what to do 
in looking over the exercises, and what he has a right to 
expect from the boys. 

Every third exercise, all through the school, ought to 
be original. That is, either a subject given, or ideas on 
a subject suggested, more or less fully, according to the 
capacity of the class. 

Every subject ought to be carefully selected. 

First of all, there should be certainty that the boys 
know all about it. Secondly, it should be attractive as 
far as possible. 

Hence, no subject in morals, or abstract questions, or 
ancient, unfamiHar persons or scenes, ought ever to be set. 



How not to do it. 235 

A short story, a description of some familiar fact, or 
scene, is the proper style of subject. Proverbs some- 
times furnish good subjects. An episode in an interesting 
story which they can read, to be enlarged and composed 
afresh, is a good form of suggesting ideas to a class. 

Original Composition means the rousing observation, 
the giving the seeing eye, and training the mind to make 
an harmonious picture out of what it sees, so that others 
may know it. Original Composition demands that such 
striking points shall be seized as mark out the thing 
spoken of in a peculiar and special way. 

No boy ought ever to be allowed to tell you that 
stone is hard, rain wet, and the sun hot. 

No boy ought ever to be allowed to tell you an auc- 
tioneer's catalogue of dry facts, one after another; as, 
" summer ending tells of winter coming," etc. 

No boy ought ever to be allow,ed to put a big lie, 
as — "there are no flies, every bird is silent, all the trees 
have lost their leaves, etc.;" when, as a fact, every tree 
is in a different stage of leaflessness, rooks caw, flies 
climb up the window pane, and so on. 

No boy ought even to be allowed to tell a lumping 
truth. " Fifty thousand men were killed." Who cares? 
but tell how one died in a natural touching way, and 
every eye shall be wet with tears. This shows what true 
composition is, it is a fine perception of little truths ex- 
pressed in a vivid way, and worked up so as to form an 
harmonious whole, with every part in its place. 

Every picture must start from copying reality. A boy 
who goes into his study to evolve out of his inner con- 
sciousness a description of a hawthorn is as foolish as a 



236 Language versus woi^ds. 

painter would be who did the same. Genius is the 
power of getting inside a subject by loving it, not a power 
of flying above it. 

In looking over Composition, remember, that an 
exercise full of word mistakes, which shows attention to 
teaching, and earnest effort to get out the thought and 
spirit, may be a very promising exercise, and an exercise 
without a fault in Grammar be most despairing. Thought 
comes first. 

Every one can be taught to have the seeing eye, 
which is the beginning of all original composition. This 
has been shown in a former chapter. 

It is a master's business to teach how to think. He 
must keep thought always before the minds of the Class 
as their object. He must show the boys how to see, 
giving them the seeing eye ; first, for facts, as for the 
hare in the field, the structure in the plant; secondly, for 
the lessons in facts, their subtle truths, the life in what 
seems inanimate. Facts the food of thought, and thought, 
this first, this last. The seeing eye and the skilful tongue, 
able to express what is seen and felt, are his work. 
Teaching is infinite, for human nature is infinite, and hu- 
man nature is its subject, and the highest thoughts of the 
highest minds in the noblest shapes are the instrument 
by which the teacher of lang aage works. 

The Thought determines the words, and in spite of 
the great difference in the natural powers of languages, 
and the genius of the speech employed by different races, 
there is, if the thought is studied, a sure and scientific way 
of treating every diversity that can arise — But a master 
of language is very different from an authority in words. 



CHAPTER XII. 



A SCHOOLBOY S CHAPTER. 



Mind and life are the work you are engaged on. 
Lives, not lessons, your own lives, are the work, and the 
prize of work. 

1. Throw away all idea of memory being your in- 
strument, or knowledge your object. 

Memory-knowledge, as such, is absolutely useless. 

Memory-knowledge as training is worse than useless. 

Memory-knowledge is often a disguise for mental in- 
capacity. 

Dead lumps of memory-work are dead. 

A parrot is a parrot whether dressed in feathers or a 
coat. 

2. Mind is known by what it puts out, Memory by 
what it casts in. 

Mind is life. Live in your work. See the people, 
see the ground, see the scenes. If Scipio is named, see 



238 Trollopes axiom. 

him. Make in your mind a picture of Scipio, a person 
to represent the name ; no matter how unlike the reality. 
The Dutch translator, who made "der Burgermeister 
Hannibal " drag cannon over the Alps, had a strong idea 
of what Hannibal was, and what he was about. The 
great painter, who painted Abraham leading his men 
against Chedorlaomer in the armour of an Italian soldier, 
had a strong idea of what Abraham was about. Trollope 
says in his wonderful Chapter on Novels and the art of 
writing them, in his Autobiography, " on the last day of 
each month recorded every person in the novel should 
be a month older than on the first." Here the whole 
science of how to work is summed up in a single sen- 
tence. Alas, there is no person at all in the Schoolboy's 
Novel, in the work of his life. It is all hearing, no 
doing, no seeing, no picturing, no reality. If the best 
acting on the stage cannot ram reality into the mind how 
can a lesson you kick at ? But as far as it is unreal it is 
nothing to you. You never forget a thing you do, cricket, 
for instance ; or even the sitting in School. It is part of 
your life. But your book-work is not part of your life. 
Make it so. You cannot drop what hand, foot, eye, or 
brain, have really done, it is part of yourselves belonging 
to hand, foot, eye, or brain, but your book-work is 
shadow-work, a parrot-like struggle with words. Mere 
sound, that goes with the sound. Alter this. 

The main rides of how to learn are simple. 

I. — See. Then examine what you see; lastly, an- 
swer, or write. 



How to learn. 239 

2. — Make no attempt to remember anything you can 
put before your eye, or picture to your mind's eye. 
Memory is not sight. For example : — What is an apple ? 
\The ajiswer to this question ought to distinguish an apple 
from all other fruit. The questioit is one, the answer is 
manifold^ 

I. — Picture an apple. Put one before your eye; 
really, if possible ; if not, picture it in your 
mind ; see it there. 
2. — Note its size, 
its shape, 
its colour, 
inside, its texture, 
its parts, pips, core, etc. 
its skin, 
its juice. 
9. — Compare with other fruits. 
All these facts are seen, as soon as the apple Is seen, 
and Intelligent sight gives the answers to the question. 

The untrained boy begins to try and remember what 
he knows about a?i apple, and flounders hopelessly for 
ever, though so familiar with the common thing, as he 
thinks it. 

Next, let a picture be taken which has to be imagined 
in the mind. For example : — Describe a field as a study 
of colour. Select, and picture. 
I. — Time of year — autumn. 
2. — Time of day — afternoon. 
3. — Kind of day — Great clouds, with sun. 
4.— Stubble. 
5. — Ground broken and uneven. 



240 The mind and its pichtres, 

6. — Bounded by hills on one side. 
7.— Trees and hedges. 
8._Water. 
9. — Cattle. 

10. — Aspect; — south-west. 

When the mental eye has got this picture put toge- 
ther, the mere sight of the famiHar objects will supply 
words and thoughts. Better still if the writer can go and 
see his field, and notice the variety of colour. 

Next, let this be applied to the study of language. 
For example: — What is the construction of ''quum"? 
or " when " in English ? 

"Quum" and "when" have two meanings. 

Frame sentences to find this out. E.g. — 

I. — "When the end has come, the past is gone." 
2. — "When I am at school, I play at cricket." 

Examine these two sentences, both of which speak of 
time, and both use the same word " when." 

But here the likeness ends. "When" in the first 
sentence means the exact moment. "AVhen" in the 
second sentence assuredly does not mean, even to the 
idolator, everlasting cricket ; but cricket at various inde- 
terminate times. In other words ; the sight of two well- 
selected sentences, in which " when " occurs, reveals that 
either a particular moment or time is very positively 
meant; or any time in a longer period, it may be over 
thousands of years ; two as entirely different thoughts as 
can enter the mind. The precise moment determines 
absolutely the use of the Fact Mood, or Indicative. Any 
moment determines absolutely the use of the Thought 
Mood, or Conjunctive. 



New wo7^ds new thoughts, 241 

Pictures in this way by sight give the reason first, 
and supply the rule afterwards, and fix both in the 
mind. 

N.B. — Never comment on nothing. He who speaks 
before he has got a certainty before his eye, co^nments 07i 
nothing. Fi^ame, or get an example. This is the law of 
all true ivork. 

When out walking shut your eyes, and then picture 
to your mind the landscape before you. You will dis- 
cover how Httle you have really seen. 

When reading shut your eyes, and then picture to 
your mind the facts you are reading. You will discover 
how little you have really seen in what you read. 

It is impossible to translate nothing into something. 
Unless the English to be translated is thoroughly under- 
stood Aristotle himself would write nonsense. 

The unknown cannot teach the unknown. Unless 
your own language is known you can know nothing more 
well. 

New words mean new powers of thought. 

It is computed that an uneducated man uses 500 
words. Shakespeare, it is said, has used 15,000. The 
Schoolboy who will not study words had better follow 
the plough, for he will never be a thinker of thoughts. 

If you don't do small things you'll never do great 
things. 

Trifles are trifles to know, but not trifles to leave 
undone, or not to know. 

Sitting over a book, and using your mind are not the 
same. Breeches-wear and brain-wear are not the same 
though the same time may be spent. 

T. 16 



242 Why we learn ? Why not f 

The humble fool does nothing he is told, calls himself 
stupid, and idles because of it. 

The cross-grained fool abuses the masters as well. 

The bumptious fool is an oracle on Education ; and 
wishes to change everything he does not know; an ex- 
tensive programme. 

The reasons why we learn are simple. 

I. — Skill is the object of all good work. 

2. — Skill means the power of doing exactly what is 
wanted to be done, at the right time. 

3. — Skill is produced by thought and practice. 

4. — Anyone without skill is so far v.dthout education. 

5. — Memory is not skill, and may be an hindrance 
to skill. 

6. — Skill does not mean being full, but being master 
of strength, and trained movement. 

7. — The trained mind is worth all the knowledge in 
the world. 

Why you do not learn. 

I. — Because you suppose knowledge is all in all. 
2. — Because you only half believe in knowledge. 
3. — Because you don't think you shall get it. 
4. — Because, if you get it, you don't quite see the use 
of it. 

5. — Because the gain, if a gain, is so very far off. 
6. — Because the present process is very unpleasant. 
7. — Because it is certain that many cannot get much. 



Axioms and rttles, 243 

8. — Because great fools are sometimes seen full of 
knowledge, and great fools still. 

9. — Besides other less creditable reasons. 

But every one can get skill, and strength. Skill and 
strengdi are always pleasant, pleasant at the beginning, 
pleasant in the middle, pleasant at the end. Want of 
skill, and the ignorance which betokens want of skill, 
where there has been proper teaching, is not a misfortune, 
but a crime. Lives not lessons are the work. 



^ome 



Axioms and Rules for Learning. 



I. — Do what you are told. 

2. — Never guess. 

3. — Nonsense never can be right. 

4. — No one is obliged to be a fool because he is 
ignorant. 

5. — Sense first, think, then write, or speak. 

6. — Put what you know, as you know it. 

7. — In translation never omit word, or syllable, par- 
ticularly compounds. 

8. — Never insert what is not there. 

9. — Never translate in defiance of the main sense, 
people, and actions, spoken of Be ready to answer 
what the passage in hand is about. 

10. — Never change the order of clauses, terms, or 
even words, v/ithout reason. 

N.B. — A fool is a person ivho does not use the sense he 
has got. 



16- 



244 Some use for " never '\ 

Verses. 

I. — Never put "tego" unless for a coverlet. 

2. — Never put "ipse," "que," "en," "ecce," etc., to 
fill up a line. 

3. — Never put *' est " with a noun, or adjective, as an 
ordinary auxiliary verb. 

4. — Never put "omne" for everything, or any adjec- 
tives without substantives, unless you can quote in sup- 
port of your word. 

5. — Never put stock phrases, "tempus in omne," 
"lata per arva," "tolHt ad astra." 

6. — Never end a pentameter with a short syllable. 

7. — Never put epithets and their nouns together twice 
in the same sentence. 

8. — Never put words together, which are not to be 
taken together, but can be. i i i i i i, as contrasted 
with 3 2 I 2 3 I. In the first instance no one can know 
which figures pair together. In the second the pairs are 
seen at once. 

Never be doing nothing. Either work, or play, or 
sleep. Never combine two of these. 

These observations may appear truisms, or trivial, 
or unpractical. Try and work by them; they will vindi- 
cate their claim to be listened to. 



CHAPTER XIII. 



THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING. 

Punishme7it. 

The subject of punishment does not fall directly 
under teaching ; yet it cannot entirely be left out, as it is 
one of the most difficult questions with which a school 
has to deal. But the author has treated of its main prin- 
ciples elsewhere"^. 

If the school work is carefully adapted to the powers 
of the boys, and the boys themselves are all tested daily, 
it becomes a very serious puzzle how to punish satisfac- 
torily the idle, the careless, or the undisciplined. 

To punish by putting on more work,- when the work 
already has been found too much, or, being enough, has 
been left undone, is absurd. Very httle can be managed 
in that way, the wheels soon get clogged, and farther 
progress impossible. 

* Education and School (Macmillan), Chapter XV. , . 



246 Not punishment but improve7ne7it. 

Whatever is done in the way of extra work ought to 
have an educational value, and keep in view the improve- 
ment of the boy punished. 

This axiom excludes all punishments in writing, un- 
less given with a view to improve writing, or as a school 
exercise to be looked over, and corrected, like any other 
school exercise. But this looking over puts extra work 
on the master, who already has as much as he can fairly 
do. 

Punishments which exact much additional work from 
the master are as impossible in a good school, as punish- 
ments which exact much additional labour from the boy. 
The true solution of the great difficulty appears to lie 
finally in a school having many privileges, as long as 
work and behaviour is good. Every privilege is a possi- 
ble punishment, as it can be taken away. This is some- 
times a severe infliction. Practically, there are two great 
hindrances to this expedient. Education is not suffi- 
ciently advanced to admit of a large number of privileges. 
They would be abused. And also the deprivation often 
lacks the one chief need in punishing, it is not quick 
enough. 

Quickness and certainty soon reduce the numbers of 
faults. Uncertainty and delay breed culprits. But some- 
thing can be done. If bad marks carry punishment, 
good marks should cancel it. The being in the first class 
should carry exemption from punishment, and require 
that the first offence should be visited by being turned 
out of sanctuary. 

Again, if the size of the classes, and the working 
powers - of the school, admit of individual cases being 



Judicious blindness and deafness. 247 

judged, and consideration shown without suspicion of 
favouritism, not what the fault deserves, but what will 
work best is the teacher's problem. Many times a wise 
forgiveness has cured, where punishment would have 
made worse. The overmatched man and the fool have 
their punishments all cut-and-dried, of the regulation 
pattern, and apply the official stamp without regard to 
anything but the actual fault. 

If work is set, then the demanding a certain number 
of lines of English or classical poetry to be learnt by 
heart is almost the only thing that cannot be evaded. 
But it is hard to be exact, and takes up much time. 

The making a boy prepare the coming lessons, not 
the past ones, with more care, either by requiring a por- 
tion to be carefully translated, or in other ways, is some- 
times practicable. 

Somewhat in the same direction Is the requiring a 
culprit, who has been guilty of a wrong construction in a 
sentence, to produce a certain number of examples of 
the right one out of the books he is reading. 

The skeleton m.aps, which can be procured, may be 
utilised as punishments, by ordering the dehnquent to 
fill in carefully a certain number of the names. A few 
lines of English verse on a subject, or a short narrative, 
or description in Enghsh, is a good form of punishment. 

A Httle judicious blindness and deafness is a great 
virtue in a wise teacher. As Solomon says, " Take no 
heed unto all words that are spoken, lest thou hear thy 
servant curse thee." The servant does not always mean 
it, and a man working on a plan will know when to 
tighten, and when to relax his grasp ; when to, see, and 



248 What y oil command, obey, 

when not to see. A dead level of punishment is a 
grievous mistake. It leads boys to think that however 
much they try there is no escape, and accordingly they 
lose heart, and cease to try. Glimmerings of better 
things should be taken advantage of, and when honest 
praise can be awarded the battle is half won. 

Matters sometimes come to a crisis with a boy, and 
he feels it, and knows that the master has right on his 
side. He is both afraid, and ashamed of his misdeeds : 
a kind talk, a free pardon, and a fresh start, is sometimes 
very effective under such circumstances. 

Choose what to punish carefully. It is a grievous 
mistake to allow boys to go on, and on, and on, with 
partial checks, until patience is exhausted, and then to 
break out on the next offender. Above all never inflict 
a punishment beyond what the evidence v/ill prove, be- 
cause a boy deserves it. If he does deserve it, be sure 
he will not be long before he gives the opportunity of 
letting him have his deserts without any possibiHty of his 
posing as a martyr. He will end the series by a notable 
act, which will be notable and plain, both to his own 
conscience, and to those important jurymen, his com- 
panions. Even lying excuses are often to be respected 
if they enable the speaker to deceive himself or his com- 
panions. It is better often to wait, and meet the boy on 
.his own ground, and from his own point of view later on, 
for a later on will come, if the excuses are lying, when 
the guilt will be plain, and repentance possible. What 
you command obey yourself most. Perhaps there is no 
more unsuspected source of misdeeds than the uncon- 
scious way in which many masters break small laws, and 



Masters and their copies, 249 

disregard small observances. How often unpunctuality 
is fostered by a want of precision in the attendance of a 
master. Or his absence on some school occasion suggests 
that such public occasions are not worth coming to for 
their own sake, but are things to escape from if possible. 

The boys extend the principle to things they wish to 
escape from ; and no one suspects, least of all the deHn- 
quent master, that the heavy case of shirking which is 
tormenting him in his class is only an humble, but too 
successful copy of himself. 

The attitude of masters ought not to be slovenly. 
The careless or sleepy posture reproduces itself in dis- 
agreeable ways. The true organiser, and sagacious 
trainer, will not cause disorder by standing in the way 
of a stream of boys, or, by coming in at wrong times, 
when numbers are going out. Boys are particularly alive 
to this kind of disrespect. Another grave cause of evil is 
the dishonour shown to the place in which the work is 
done. Things are allowed to be left about, and not put 
away when finished with, great roughness is permitted in 
the treatment of the room, and its furniture. Yet there 
is no law more absolutely certain than that mean treat- 
ment . produces mean ideas ; and whatever men honour 
they give honour to outwardly. It is a grievous wrong 
not to show honour to lessons, and the place where les- 
sons are given. 

The public opinion of any Society can expel any 
fault it pleases from that Society. 

The public opinion of a school Society is formed far 
more by the private habits and character of the masters 
than the masters are at all aware of, or sometimes would 



250 Ojily thieves have thieves^ hojiotir. 

like to be aware of. The authorities also should en- 
deavour to form a healthy public opinion by making \tpay, 
to use a slang expression, to keep the society clear of 
certain offences. As in many schools some reward is 
given when high Honours are gained, though the mass 
of boys did not gain them, so the mass may be made 
responsible, if wise conditions are laid down, for the dis- 
honour and treason of a member of the school, though 
personally they had nothing to do with the actual crime. 
There is no reason in a true school, where true measures 
for giving each boy a thorough chance of doing his best 
are taken, why the old idolatry of "thieves' honour" 
should exist. There is no more necessity in the nature 
of things why a school-boy, if given fair play, should 
protect and uphold cheating, lying, and evil in his com- 
panions, than why he should help a thief to escape in 
Regent Street. 

By all means if the boys are thieves, and the masters 
are police, let the thieves stick to the thieves. But if 
boys and masters are united in an earnest, kindly struggle 
for good ; and all the structure of the place, and all the 
habits, and all the currents of life show this ; then down 
with the traitors and the thieves, who make themselves 
unworthy of trust and liberty, in a place framed for 
liberty, and worthy in all respects of trust, and allegiance. 
It is quite true that all this is a matter of much organiza- 
tion and care, and depends on questions of structure and 
detail, which are outside the present discussion ; but it 
is also true that it is possible to get rid of "honour 
amongst thieves," and to make the school-boy see that 
unless he is a thief, which he has no business to be, the 



Small barriers great safeguards, 251 

old superstition must retire into the limbo of past follies, 
and be seen no more. 

The main question of the principles, and even the 
practice of punishment, has been left very much un- 
touched, partly because the author has written on it at 
some length in another book"^", partly because in a dis- 
sertation on Teaching what ought to be done to teach, 
rather than the means of grappling with non-teaching and 
non-learning, is the question ; and punishment is but a 
by-issue. But it will be observed that much stress is laid 
on unobtrusively cutting off occasions of evil, preventing 
it, or meeting it at a very early stage. Small barriers are 
great safeguards. Small barriers wisely placed, and faith- 
fully kept to, mark the sagacious ruler. The sagacious 
ruler is a perfect master of detail, not its slave j a master 
of detail, with his eye fixed on every first point of orderly 
training, most strict himself, and gradually getting others 
to be strict; but genial, and forbearing, dealing gently 
with the habits of a disorderly time. 

As long as human nature is human nature, and learn- 
ing to think a labour, and order opposed to the untrained 
boyishness, punishments will be needed ; and needed in 
proportion to the difficulties under which the work is car- 
ried on. The ablest man overmatched in numbers, with 
all things round him dislocated and imperfect, must punish. 

There are a thousand hindrances to the best work 
being done. As long as this is the case much preventable 
evil must go on. But in the abstract a single sentence 
liberally interpreted closes the whole question, " Honour 
the work, and the work will honour you." 

* Education and School (Macmillan), Chap. xv. 



CHAPTER XIV. 



CONCLUSION. 



The dead hand, and the shadow of death. 

Teaching is not a mere matter of competency 
or incompetency in the teacher. Unfortunately when 
all has been said, the conditions under which the 
work has to be done do affect the possibility of doing 
the work. 

A school is a very complex structure. It is a me- 
chanism of a very costly description; both the perma- 
nent outlay in buildings, and the annual cost of working, 
are great, and the requirements exceedingly varied. The 
buildings and grounds alone necessary for anything like 
thoroughly efficient work in a first-class school for 300 
boys cannot be put at less than from ;£"8o,ooo to 
;;^ 1 00,000, and upwards. Unfortunately also it is not 
possible to treat a school as a factory. Education is a 



Trusts and Schools. 253 

matter of dealing with life. And life will not stand still ; 
so even if perfection is at the present moment reached, 
the perfection of to-day will not be the perfection of 
to-morrow ; and if the movement of life is not allowed 
for, the life will either die out, or betake itself else- 
where. 

In many instances the buildings and main funds of 
the school are furnished by what are rightly called Found- 
ations. Thus a large amount of property exists for 
school purposes on the one hand; and all the school 
work is done by men who are not the owners of this 
property on the other. 

There have therefore been in existence for many 
years, indeed from the beginning, two bodies of men in 
each school, the men in charge of the property, and the 
men in charge of the work. 

Some thirty years ago before the nation woke up, 
and stretched itself, there was no system and much 
waste. In many instances the property had left the 
school, and the school had dwindled or perished, or the 
school had left the property in a great degree, and struck 
out a new line in freedom. Every one ,was doing what 
was right in his own eyes within certain traditional limits. 
Trusts and Schools, and Schools and Trusts, were in 
every conceivable state of undefined relation and 
anarchy. If that could be called anarchy where each 
went their separate way, that is, when there was an 
each in the case. For sometimes the Trust had swal- 
lowed up the funds, and sometimes a sinecure had done 
the same. 

There was however one redeeming point in this state 



2 54 Sth^ criticism f hope, 

of tilings of no mean significance. Like the Parochial 
life of England, however much that life may languish, 
there was nothing to prevent the life, if strong, from 
putting forth all its strength and creating a great school, 
or a most efficient system of teaching. There was also 
nothing to prevent the high hope in a worker's heart that 
the truest form of life might push forth from within, 
grow, spread, and prevail, and that successful skill, and 
earnest experience, might bring order out of this unsettled 
material, and reform schools by presenting a better type 
as a model. Gradually the air became charged with that 
electricity of change, which, no one knows how or why, 
ushers in a period of movement, and^ if it is but the 
tossing of a sick bed, compels some activity. Many 
minds were full of thoughts ; many lips unsparing in cri- 
ticism; hopes and fears according to men's tempers 
sprang into existence on all sides. Go where you might, 
talk of wasted endowments, of the dead hand, and neg- 
lected work, of useless trusts, and boys uneducated, and 
funds misapplied, or worse, was heard on all sides from 
every lip. The impossibility of true education was the 
universal theme, so long as schools were at the mercy of 
hands that felt not handHng above, and the good or bad 
worker stumbling on below. The heart of England 
seemed to be stirred. A host of undefined longings, and 
fresh, keen hopes, and tremulous expectations, swept 
like a breeze through the land, and rolled the mists of 
stagnant places away. Every worker, whose heart was in 
his work, looked up, and thought winter was over, and 
spring was coming, and that living work would find free- 
dom to grow. The dead hand was to be taken ofifr 



The dead hand that is dead. 255 

Trusts were no longer to weigh down schools, the skilled 
workman was to have fair play; Bumbledom and King 
Log were to come to an end, and a new era of enlightened 
liberty to begin. But what came of it all ? 

Much was heard of the dead hand; a captivating 
phrase, well-devised, and skilful; reflecting great credit 
on its inventors. There is much in a phrase. When 
once current, no one examines its meaning; a good 
phrase is worth ten thousand arguments. How often 
has a name carried all before it. There is a dead hand 
without doubt. They know it, who in their dark hour 
have felt it at their throat. They know it, who toiling 
in dangerous ways, have had its cold, hard grip pulling 
them back into ruin. But the hand of the dead is a very 
different thing from the dead hand. There is a dead hand 
without doubt, the pitiless hand of ignorant power meddHng 
with hfe ; which does not mean to be pitiless, but is piti- 
less, because it is dead ; and being dead is thrust into 
living, palpitating life. But the dead hand is not the hand 
of the dead. The hands of the dead are oftentimes full of 
life, living powers in the kingdom of life. Those hands 
are not dead, those hands stretched out from the grave 
so full of ministering power. Those hands that night 
and morning have not failed to pass on the beneficent 
counsel of the wise head, the warm enthusiasm of the 
noble heart, the love that cast self aside, and gave in a 
free spirit in order to kindle the lamp of light and life 
for aftertime. Nay, they are not dead. Shall it be law- 
ful in this wise modern world, and meet with complete 
immunity, lawful for hands to amass wealth, or inherit it, 
and then abuse it to every carnal lust, and every foul 



256 The hands of the dead that live. 

indulgence of passion or pride, without hindrance ; and 
not lawful to dedicate self and wealth to make your 
brethren of the same race better as the years pass on ? 
Not lawful — so far that the law may not at any time step 
in, and claim as public property, because virtue has de- 
voted it to a good end, the liberal bounty, that vice 
would have put out of reach by wasting it. Is the hand 
dead that gives its best to aftertime instead of sinking it 
in the all-selfish sea? And is the hand alive which takes 
the gift, not sparing always even living donors, and cares 
not for him who gave ? 

Let there be no misconception in this. If the end 
proposed by the giver is not good, destroy it. If it is 
extinct, replace it, change, modify, reassign. But if the 
giver gave a gift for a good end, and the main purpose 
of the liberal hand can be read with ease, as it generally 
can be, and can be translated into modern use, then the 
same immunity from confiscation, which the profligate 
secures by his vile spending on self, should be secured 
to him, who in his generous heart has spent on others. 
Is it true that the great purpose dies ? Those hands are 
not dead, those living hands so full of ministering life, 
that never, from the first hour that the living heart 
brought forth its birth, have ceased their bounty, or 
wanted sons of light and life to receive it, and pass it on. 
It is a grand thing to know, for him who has the 
heart to know it, that the bread has been eaten, — bread 
out of hallowed hands, hands of the dead, so be it, hands 
hallowed by death, which has left only the glory and the 
goodness, the evil perished with the flesh, — that the bread 
has been eaten, century after century, by a brotherhood, 



King Henry s bread. 257 

each in his place, consciously or unconsciously, fulfilling 
his course, however much traitors may have been at work 
to betray; and some there are who know it. Some there 
are who count it a gracious thing, a holy debt, a gracious 
thing, and a high, to have eaten King Henry's bread, 
and received light and Hfe from King Henry's hand. 
Who feel a soldier's allegiance in being of his band, in 
having the King's most kingly chapel of King's College 
their own, part of their inheritance, life of their life. 
Some there are, who go forth to their own life-work with 
the holy hand of the dead who live laid on their hearts, 
who feel that they have a debt to repay, who see a ray 
of life from afar cast upon all they do, and bear about 
for ever a light within, which they must pass on for the 
sake of the dead that live. If this be death, and the 
dead hand, how great should be the life that is to sup- 
plant it. And in a humbler way, though not less true, 
how many a quiet worker, standing in some ancient home 
of learning, about to begin, keen with fresh hope, and 
untried strength, and plans ready, before he enters on 
his life's task has knelt in spirit to receive from the hands 
of the dead that live the half-fulfilled purpose of days of 
old as his inheritance to carry on ; and has felt in the 
worst hour of after-trial the calm assurance of being one 
of the links of Hfe; felt it a cause worth any overthrow; 
felt that he worked on holy ground, because of the man 
who in old time poured his life and blessing there, be- 
cause of the seed sown in centuries past, and the har- 
vest to be looked for in centuries to come. It ennobles 
the meanest to feel that they are part of a great living 
organism of life passing on life from the hands of the 

T. 17 



258 Hope sprung to life. 

dead that live, instead of being a screw in a Government 
machine, or the mainstay of a joint stock company's 
shares ; honest positions enough, and capable of good, 
honest work, which good men and true can do, who 
deserve every honour they can get, but not the glow of 
a noble life, not the power passed on by hands that live 
though dead. If this be the dead hand, then welcome 
death. But the hands of the dead filled England with 
life, and light, and hope. 

No doubt an old house that has not been swept needs 
sweeping, but pulling down is not sweeping. It may 
need additions, and fresh arrangement, but pulling down 
is not addition. A time of awaking came over the land, 
and a very necessary inquiry took place. There was 
much that needed change when the awaking began, 
change in antiquated law, change also in the wakers up, 
change in the ways of blind custom, and funds misap- 
plied, change in the hands that held, not change in the 
hands that gave, as far as their intention went, not scorn 
cast on the liberal hearts of old. All were agreed that 
the weight was to be taken off work ; and the workers' 
hearts beat high. It was a memorable time to those, 
who were at work ; a time of promise, a veritable new 
world. The property of endowments was no longer to 
be the dominant power for good or evil, but the Schools 
and the work were to be all in all. The boys were to be 
taught, all of them, and no waste of the living material 
permitted any more. A standard of true work was to be 
set up, the principles of school with regard to cost and 
efficiency made plain, shortcomings exposed, and neglect 
and sham glory equally put to shame. These, and a 



Hope strangled. Shadow of death, 259 

thousand like dreams were dreamed according to the 
special views of the dreamers ; but no one had the slight- 
est doubt but that there was to be a breaking of chains, 
a letting of skilled workmen out of prison, an age of 
freedom, freedom in work, free progress, enlightened 
construction of schools, a starting point given for 
moving life in the present, and growth in skill, and a 
power of developing better methods provided for in the 
future. 

The working world with its experience, its hopes, and 
its life, was soon taught how much better non-workers 
could manage their experiences, their hopes, and their 
life, than they could themselves. They learnt the mean- 
ing of the dead hand, when amateur power seized on the 
living organism of skilled work, stuck it on the official 
pin, made a specimen of it, and ticketed it in its own 
glass case. The Schools were tacked on as appendages 
to Trusts; and the skilled workman, engaged in the 
highest kind of skilled work, deliberately and securely 
put under amateurs in perpetuity. This closes the 
scene. Everything must lie in the shadow of this 
death. 

Next the schools were tacked on to Examiners ; who 
come fresh from their books to judge the work of the 
practical worker with all its varying factors, award praise 
and blame in total ignorance of those varying factors, 
and report this to the amateur power above, which knows 
still less. Even in the bookwork the process is mislead- 
ing. Any original kind of teaching; any real advance, 
that is, or change of old methods is absolutely outside 
the examiner's tether ; any original kind of teaching, and 



26o The dead hand, the s^iadow of death, 

real advance in method, is accordingly killed at once 
under the shadow of this death. The dead hand is 
heavy on it. It cannot live. 

Lastly, the simple question, v/hat is necessary to 
enable a school to teach each boy, has neither been 
asked, nor answered. But if each boy is not really 
taught, then as far as the boys who are not taught and 
not trained are concerned, the school is no school. And 
as far as the masters are concerned, teaching in its true 
sense is impossible. This is death to the ordinary teach- 
ing. Hope is quenched. The shadow of death is over 
the land, and the dead hand on its teaching heart. If 
any seriously believe that the dead hand of external 
power can successfully deal with the most living, delicate, 
and progressive of works, true education, their armour is 
impenetrable by any words. And it is not the business 
of this treatise to enlarge on the subject. 

Nothing that has been said in any way repudiates 
supervision, publicity, or a court of appeal. 

The nation has a right to be assured that the endow- 
ments can do proper work, and are up to a fair level 
doing it. A pass inspection is honest for the teaching, 
and would not destroy life. The nation has a right to 
be assured that the funds are not misapplied, or made 
away with ; a force of Trustees with a pass inspecting 
power for the School, and entrusted with the secular 
business, is competent to supervise the funds, and would 
not destroy life. But the present system does not 
necessarily enlighten the nation on these points, and 
is less and less likely to do so. Even if the system 
of vesting so much administrative power in non-working 



The dead hand, the shadow of death, 261 

hands was good in the abstract, the moment it has 
to be applied over a whole kingdom, and the wide 
area of national education, it must break down from 
the impossibility of finding a sufficient number of men 
competent from intellect, character, and position to 
exercise it. 

It is a strange spectacle everywhere seen, though no 
one sees it ; the spectacle of the nation putting their 
best hope, their children, under the charge of men 
whom they do not trust to do their work, and so put 
them in turn under the charge of others. 

And those others enjoy the singular advantage of not 
knowing the work, and having neither opportunity, nor 
inclination to know it, with the additional recommenda- 
tion of very often having been in earlier years hopelessly 
left behind by the very men, whom they now control in 
their own special profession and skill. But it is useless 
speaking on a subject foreclosed. The defeated get no 
hearing. The preachers of a lost cause are derided, till 
at some future time laws that tie up improvement, de- 
mands for what comes uppermost, impossible conditions 
of work, and the glorifying of unsound success avenge 
themselves on themselves ; and all has to be done over 
again if there is health enough in the body poUtic ; or if 
there is not, a worse thing follows. 

How many hopes were raised, when the people woke 
up, which are now killed; hopes of liberty, free work, 
life, and living progress, which have all passed into the 
shadow of death, under the dead hand. How strangely the 
words of hberty sound. How are the swift feet prisoned 
in the Chinese shoe. The nation woke up. But there 



262 Infallible power. 

is an evil worse than sleep. Better to sleep, than awake, 
and make a noise about truth, and find truth trouble- 
some and dangerous, and shut the door in her face, and 
sit down with all the self-satisfaction of the infaUible, 
and rejoice, — with everything finished before anything is 
begun. 



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